|
Why the Precautionary Principle?
A Meditation on Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) and the Breasts of Mothers
Sandra Steingraber2 / Rachel's 8jul99
Those of you who know me know that when I talk on these topics
I usually speak out of two identities: biologist and cancer activist.
My diagnosis with bladder cancer at age 20 makes more urgent my
scientific research. Conversely, my Ph.D. in ecology informs my
understanding of how and why I became a cancer patient in the
first place: bladder cancer is considered a quintessential environmental
disease. Links between environment and public health became the
topic of my third book, LIVING DOWNSTREAM, but since I have been
given the task of speaking about the effect of toxic materials
on future generations, I'm going to speak out of another one of
my identities -- that of a mother.
I'm a very new mother. I gave birth in September 1998 to my daughter
and first child. So, I'm going to speak very intimately and in
the present tense. You know it's a very powerful thing for a person
with a cancer history to have a child. It's a very long commitment
for those of us unaccustomed to looking far into the future. My
daughter's name is Faith.
I'm also learning what all parents must learn, which is a new
kind of love. It's a love that's more than an emotion or a feeling.
It's a deep physical craving like hunger or thirst. It's the realization
that you would lay down your life for this eight-pound person
without a second thought. You would pick up arms for them. You
would empty your bank account. It's love without boundaries and
were this kind of love directed at another adult, it would be
considered totally inappropriate. A kind of fatal attraction.
Maybe, when directed at babies, we should call this "natal
attraction."
I say this to remind us all what is at stake. If we would die
or kill for our children, wouldn't we do anything within our power
to keep toxics out of their food supply? Especially if we knew,
in fact, there were alternatives to these toxics?
Of all human food, breast milk is now the most contaminated. Because
it is one rung up on the food chain higher than the foods we adults
eat, the trace amounts of toxic residues carried into mothers'
bodies become even more concentrated in the milk their breasts
produce. To be specific, it's about 10 to 100 times more contaminated
with dioxins than the next highest level of stuff on the human
food chain, which are animal-derived fats in dairy, meat, eggs,
and fish. This is why a breast-fed infant receives its so-called
"safe" lifetime limit of dioxin in the first six months
of drinking breast milk. Study after study also shows that the
concentration of carcinogens in human breast milk declines steadily
as nursing continues. Thus the protective effect of breast feeding
on the mother appears to be a direct result of downloading a lifelong
burden of carcinogens from her breasts into the tiny body of her
infant.
When it comes to the production, use, and disposal of PVC [polyvinyl
chloride plastic], the breasts of breast-feeding mothers are the
tailpipe. Representatives from the vinyl industry emphasize how
common a material PVC is, and they are correct. It is found in
medical products, toys, food packaging, and vinyl siding. What
they don't say is that sooner or later all of these products are
tossed into the trash, and here in New England, we tend to shovel
our trash into incinerators. Incinerators are de facto laboratories
for dioxin manufacture, and PVC is the main ingredient in this
process. The dioxin created by the burning of PVC drifts from
the stacks of these incinerators, attaches to dust particles in
the atmosphere, and eventually sifts down to Earth as either dry
deposition or in rain drops. This deposition then coats crops
and other plants, which are eaten by cows, chickens, and hogs.
Or, alternatively, it's rained into rivers and lakes and insinuates
itself into the flesh of fish. As a breast-feeding mother, I take
these molecules into my body and distill them in my breast tissue.
This is done through a process through which fat globules from
throughout my whole body are mobilized and carried into the breast
lobes, where, under the direction of a pituitary hormone called
prolactin, they are made into human milk. Then, under the direction
of another pituitary hormone called oxytocin, this milk springs
from the grape-like lobes and flows down long tubules into the
nipple, which is a kind of sieve, and into the back of the throat
of the breast-feeding infant. My daughter.
So, this, then, is the connection. This milk, my milk, contains
dioxins from old vinyl siding, discarded window blinds, junked
toys, and used I.V. bags. Plastic parts of buildings that were
burned down accidentally are also housed in my breasts. These
are indisputable facts. They are facts that we scientists are
not arguing about. Whatwe do spend a lot of time debating is what
exactly are the health effects on the generation of children that
my daughter belongs to. We don't know with certainty because these
kids have not reached the age at which a lot of diseases possibly
linked to dioxin exposure would manifest themselves. Unlike mice
and rats, we have long generational times. We do know with certainty
that childhood cancers are on the rise, and indeed they are rising
faster than adult cancers. We don't have any official explanation
for that yet.
Let me tell you something else I've learned about breast feeding.
It's an ecstatic experience. The same hormone (oxytocin) that
allows milk to flow from the back of the chest wall into the nipple
also controls female orgasm. This so-called let-down reflex makes
the breast feel very warm and full and fizzy, as if it were a
shaken-up Coke bottle. That's not unpleasant. Moreover, the mouths
of infants -- their gums, tongues, and palates -- are perfectly
designed to receive this milk. A newborn's mouth and a woman's
nipple are like partners in a tango. The most expensive breast
pump -- and I have a $500 one -- can only extract about half of
the volume that a newborn baby can because such machines cannot
possibly imitate the intimate and exquisite tonguing, sucking,
and gumming motion that infants use to extract milk from the nipple,
which is not unpleasant either.
Through this ecstatic dance, the breast-fed infant receives not
just calories, but antibodies. Indeed the immune system is developed
through the process of breast feeding, which is why breast-fed
infants have fewer bouts of infectious diseases than bottle-fed
babies. In fact, the milk produced in the first few days after
birth is almost all immunological in function. This early milk
is not white at all but clear and sticky and is called colostrum.
Then, from colostrum you move to what's called transitional milk,
which is very fatty and looks like liquid butter. Presumably then,
transitional milk is even more contaminated than mature milk,
which comes in at about two weeks post-partum. Interestingly,
breast milk is so completely digested that the feces of breast-fed
babies doesn't even smell bad. It has the odor of warm yogurt
and the color of French mustard. By contrast, the excretions of
babies fed on formula are notoriously unpleasant.
What is the price for the many benefits of breast milk? We don't
yet know. However, one recent Dutch study found that schoolchildren
who were breast fed as babies had three times the level of PCBs
in their blood as compared to children who had been exclusively
formula fed. PCBs are probably carcinogens. Why should there be
any price for breast feeding? It should be a zero-risk activity.
If there was ever a need to invoke the Precautionary Principle
-- the idea that we must protect human life from possible toxic
danger well in advance of scientific proof about that danger --
it is here, deep inside the chest walls of nursing mothers where
capillaries carry fat globules into the milk-producing lobes of
the mammary gland. Not only do we know little about the long-term
health effects of dioxin and PCB exposure in newborns, we haven't
even identified all the thousands of constituent elements in breast
milk that these contaminants might act on. For example, in 1997
researchers described 130 different sugars unique to human milk.
Called oligosaccharides, these sugars are not digested but function
instead to protect the infant from infection by binding tightly
to intestinal pathogens. Additionally, they appear to serve as
a source of sialic acid, which is essential to brain development.
Most recently, Swedish researchers discovered powerful anti-cancer
proteins in breast milk. Activated by stomach acids, they appear
to enhance cell suicide in defective cells, which is one way our
own bodies protect us from developing cancer.[3]
So, this is my conclusion. Breast feeding is a sacred act. It
is a holy thing. To talk about breast feeding versus bottle feeding,
to weigh the known risks of infectious diseases against the possible
risks of childhood or adult cancers is an obscene argument. Those
of us who are advocates for women and children and those of us
who are parents of any kind need to become advocates for uncontaminated
breast milk. A woman's body is the first environment. If there
are toxic materials from PVC in the breasts of women, then it
becomes our moral imperative to solve the problem. If alternatives
to PVC exist, then it becomes morally imperative that we embrace
the alternatives and make them a reality.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This essay is exerpted from a full-length book just published
by Island Press: PROTECTING PUBLIC HEALTH & THE ENVIRONMENT:
IMPLEMENTING THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE.[1] (To order the book
from Island Press, telephone 1-800-828-1302 -- well worth the
$30 price.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Carolyn Raffensperger and Joel Tickner, editors, PROTECTING
PUBLIC HEALTH & THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLEMENTING THE PRECAUTIONARY
PRINCIPLE (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1999). $30.00. ISBN
1-55963-688-2. Telephone 1-800-828-1302.
[2] Sandra Steingraber, poet, writer, biologist, and cancer survivor,
lives in Ithaca, N.Y.
[3] C. Kohler and others, "Protease activation in apoptosis
induced by MAL," EXPERIMENTAL CELL RESEARCH Vol. 249, No.
2 (June 15, 1999), pgs. 260-268.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTICE
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes.
Environmental Research Foundation provides this electronic version
of RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY free of charge even
though it costs the organization considerable time and money to
produce it. We would like to continue to provide this service
free. You could help by making a tax-deductible contribution (anything
you can afford, whether $5.00 or $500.00). Please send your tax-deductible
contribution to: Environmental Research Foundation, P.O. Box 5036,
Annapolis, MD 21403-7036. Please do not send credit card information
via E-mail. For further information about making tax-deductible
contributions to E.R.F. by credit card please phone us toll free
at 1-888-2RACHEL, or at (410) 263-1584, or fax us at (410) 263-8944.
--Peter Montague, Editor
------------------------------------------------------------------------
RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #658 .---July 8, 1999---
HEADLINES: PVC AND THE BREASTS OF MOTHERS
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; E-mail: erf@rachel.org
==========
All back issues are available by E-mail: send E-mail to info@rachel.org
with the single word HELP in the message.
Back issues are also available from http://www.rachel.org . To
start your own free subscription, send E-mail to listserv@rachel.org
with the words SUBSCRIBE RACHEL-WEEKLY YOUR NAME in the message.
The Rachel newsletter is now also available in Spanish; to learn
how to subscribe, send the word AYUDA in an E-mail message to
info@rachel.org .
|
