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Toxin Exposure in Infancy Affects Health for a Lifetime

by Dr. Stephen Sinatra

Published 02/04/09

Welcoming a new baby is one of life’s greatest joys, and medical advances have done much to protect the health of mother and child. But, as I learned at an environmental medicine conference several years ago, environmental toxins pose a more significant danger to newborns than previously thought. Protecting against these toxins can improve a child’s health during infancy and throughout his or her life.

The lecturer who spoke on this topic was Dr. Doris Rapp, an Arizona physician who, since 1975, has been treating and writing about kids being made sick by chemicals. The risks of exposure are not new. I fully expected her to say that breast milk contains whatever toxins are present in the mother’s body—but I didn’t expect to hear that those toxins are concentrated tenfold!

This concentration of toxins is a serious public health issue because many mothers believe breast milk is the best source of nourishment for babies. In principle, that’s true—breast milk delivers vital nutrients, digestive enzymes, hormones, and antibodies. But to whatever degree a breast-feeding mother has been exposed to toxins, her breast milk also delivers a concentrated dollop of those toxins—most of which are absorbed from everyday sources. Examples include residue from bug sprays, mercury ingested from eating fish, benzene inhaled at the gas station, and residue from flame-retardant materials (also called PBDEs), which is common in dust. The high fat and protein content of breast milk bonds with these and other contaminants, as well as heavy metals.

Interestingly, the body uses breast milk in the same way it uses the urinary and intestinal tracts and the skin—as a means to rid itself of toxins. “Nobody thinks of the breast as a vehicle of excretion, but it is,” Dr. Rapp said. “The body excretes the bad stuff, protecting the mother, but at the expense of the baby.”

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