Gestational Blues
A quest for a healthy pregnancy in an unhealthy society

March/April 2006

by Erin Middlewood

WHEN I LEARNED I WAS PREGNANT in March 2005, I did what any mother in history might have done: I marveled that the tiny blob of cells inside me could turn into a person. Then I started doing what mothers might have thought to do only recently: worry about all the hazardous substances that might keep those cells from properly multiplying and organizing themselves.

I frantically wracked my brain to remember when I last drank wine. How many glasses did I have? I stopped drinking alcohol, gave up my morning coffee, and began carefully avoiding soft cheeses, which can carry listeria. I choked down spinach, even though it didn't sit well in my queasy stomach during the early months, because I read that it would help my baby develop.

When in the past I had balked at higher prices for organic produce, I happily paid extra now. I anguished when our house was sprayed for carpenter ants and stayed away for the night. I wore a charcoal mask when I helped my husband paint the basement. I did all this because I realized that during pregnancy and for months beyond birth while breastfeeding, my body was not only connected to the environment—it was the environment. I was the Earth, at least to my child.

Just as I had worried about purity of water and air, now I had to worry about healthful blood and milk, precious natural resources of their own. I tried as much as I could to control what I ate, drank, inhaled, or absorbed.

It didn't take long for me to realize how absurd it all was, and for my sense of control to shatter.

A few months into my pregnancy, the Seattle-based Northwest Environment Watch released a study analyzing forty samples of breast milk from first-time breastfeeding mothers in my region. Despite the Pacific Northwest's conceit that it's a relatively pristine place to live, the study found the same toxic polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, that had shown up in breast milk samples in other studies undertaken around the country.

I couldn't fool myself. There was no reason to believe that my breast milk would be any cleaner than that of any other mother who used a computer, couch, or bed treated with PBDE flame retardants. Nor did I have any reason to believe that my breast milk would escape contamination by PCBs, formerly used in transformers, fluorescent light ballasts, and other electrical equipment. Though banned in the United States in 1976, PCBs persist for decades in the environment and climb the food chain into the meat, fish, and dairy products I grew up eating.

A Canadian study recently found the same chemicals and more in the body of renowned wildlife artist Robert Bateman, who lives on an idyllic British Columbia island and eats only organic food.

After the Seattle study, my husband and I asked our obstetrician whether we should reconsider my plans to breastfeed. Our doctor told us that breastfeeding remains the best nourishment for babies, and I pursued my own research for further comfort. Scientists first discovered DDE, a residue of DDT, and PCBs in human breast milk in the 1950s. Subsequent studies have continued to find the chemicals, as well as PBDEs, in breast milk. But a long string of studies persuasively documents the benefits of breastfeeding.

I found further reassurance from Dr. Ruth Lawrence, author of Breastfeeding: A Guide for the Medical Profession and a professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and pediatrics at the University of Rochester. "The benefits are tremendous," says Lawrence, who helped the American Academy of Pediatrics draft recent recommendations on breastfeeding that urge mothers to breastfeed for a year, exclusively so for six months. "Everything in human milk is just perfect for brain growth. Many of the constituents don't exist in cow's milk and formula."

Through breastfeeding, Lawrence and others say, I will give my son my immunities, as well as 160 fatty acids that are absent in baby formula, while sparing him the difficult-to-digest cow's milk and soy found in formula—along with its higher levels of heavy metals, dangerous bacteria, and hormone-imbalancing phytoestrogens. According to a host of studies, breastfed babies have fewer allergies, grow up to have a lower incidence of obesity and cardiovascular disease, and enjoy invaluable bonding with their mothers. And women who breastfeed enjoy a rush of feel-good hormones as they offer life-sustaining nourishment to their children.

But my inquiry into breastfeeding ultimately revealed a worse affront to my son's health, one which I had much less control over: the many toxic chemicals, including the kind found in breast milk, that reach vulnerable fetuses through the umbilical cord before they're born.

The placenta filters a mother's blood before it passes nourishment to the fetus, but it can't stop a stream of industrial chemicals from slipping through. Among other hazards, fetuses are exposed to mercury from coal-fired power plants and seafood, polyaromatic hydrocarbons from vehicle exhaust and burning garbage, and perfluorinated chemicals found in Teflon, Scotchgard, food packaging, and fabric and carpet protectors.

In a 2005 study, the Washington DC-based Environmental Working Group found 287 chemicals in the umbilical cord blood of ten infants. "The dangers of pre- or post-natal exposure to this complex mixture of carcinogens, developmental toxins and neurotoxins have never been studied," the report stated. "Chemical exposures in the womb or during infancy can be dramatically more harmful than exposures later in life."

Because of the complexity and cost of analyzing the cord blood—$10,000 for each sample—the study was limited in scope. Nor could it yield data on the demographics or health of the mothers and babies, because the samples came anonymously from Red Cross centers across the country.

Still, the research established that the problem exists. And unlike exposure through breast milk, in utero chemical exposure evidently affects childhood development. In a sixteen-year study by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, researchers measured prenatal and infant exposure to PCBs and DDE in 856 North Carolina children through the early 1990s. The children exposed in utero experienced small delays in motor development, which they overcame after age two, said Dr. Walter J. Rogan, co-author of the study. "[But] we found no relationship between postnatal exposure (via breast milk) and developmental delay."

As it turns out, several long-term studies suggest that the nutrients in breast milk may help counteract the ill effects of prenatal exposure to industrial chemicals. As noted by the Environmental Working Group's 2003 report on toxins in breast milk, breastfed babies who had been exposed in utero to PCBs experienced less damage from the chemicals than their bottle-fed counterparts.

But even if breastfeeding and other choices can mitigate a child's exposure to toxins, the in utero exposure still occurs. It's nothing I can fix by myself. As overwhelmed as I have felt, my worries have been too narrow. The health of my child depends on more than whether I forgo dry-cleaned clothes, avoid artificial fragrances, eat organic spinach, or ventilate my computer room. As the person responsible for raising a healthy child, I need a few things from society too: mandated safety studies, bans on chemicals that aren't demonstrated to be safe, and a transformation of basic values. I need a world that no longer treats chemical-coated nonstick cookware as necessary, and the gift of life itself as expendable.

Source:
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/06-2om/Middlewood.html

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Smoking to Blame for Asian-American Cancer 'Gender Gap'
Forbes

04.21.06

FRIDAY, April 21 (HealthDay News) -- Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese men in California have a cancer death rate three times greater than that of South Asian females living in the state.

In fact, the cancer death rate for California females of Asian origin is one of the lowest in the world, according to a University of California, Davis, study.

The reason? Wide gender differences in Asians' use of tobacco, which suggests that eliminating smoking would result in low cancer death rates among all Asian and Pacific Islander Americans, the researchers said.

The findings suggest that smoking causes many more cancer deaths among these groups of people than previously recognized.

"Among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, non-lung cancer death rates, like lung cancer death rates, correlate very closely with their smoke exposure," Bruce N. Leistikow, associate professor of public health sciences and a leading expert on smoking-related illnesses, said in a prepared statement.

"If all Asian and Pacific Islanders had as little smoke exposure as South Asian females in California, our work suggests that their cancer mortality rates across the board could be as low as that of the South Asian females."

The cancer death rate for South Asian females in California is 58 deaths per 100,000 per year. The rate for the United States as a whole is 193.5 per 100,000 people per year.

The researchers concluded that Korean-American males in California have the highest smoking-related cancer death rate of any of the Asian and Pacific Islander American groups in this study. Seventy-one percent of the Korean men's death rate was linked to smoking, compared to zero percent for South Asian females in California.

The study also identified troubling trends in three groups. Lung cancer deaths among South Asian males in California doubled between 1988 and 2001, and among Filipina and Korean females in California, lung cancer death rates have been increasing four percent to five percent a year.

The findings were published online in the journal Preventive Medicine.

"Based on our work, we can predict that these trends will be accompanied by parallel increases in non-lung cancer deaths," Leistikow said. "Many lives can be saved by strengthening tobacco control measures -- cigarette taxes, counter-advertising, smoking bans, linguistically and culturally appropriate smoking prevention measures, and quit-smoking programs."

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about Asian and Pacific Islander Americans and tobacco.

Source:
http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hscout/2006/04/21/hscout532228.html

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Global Health Update

By Christine Gorman
Time Inc.
Thursday, Apr. 13, 2006

Airline Passengers Exposed to Mumps

Did you travel on the flights listed below? If so, you may have been exposed to mumps, according to this report from the Centers for Disease Control.

Apparently two people who unknowingly carried mumps also did a lot of flying in March and April. Medical staff in Dallas, Texas, Washington, D.C. and Detroit, Michigan should be paying particularly close attention to this list.

Here's the list of flights that the CDC says carried a mumps-infected passenger:

Northwest Airline (NWA) flights:
• March 26 NWA (Mesaba) #3025 from Waterloo, Iowa to Minneapolis, Minnesota
• March 26 NWA #760 from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Detroit, Michigan
• March 27 NWA #0260 from Detroit, Michigan, to Washington, DC--Reagan National
• March 29 NWA #1705 from Washington, DC--Reagan National to Minneapolis, Minnesota • March 29 NWA (Mesaba) #3026 from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Waterloo, Iowa

American Airline (AA) flights:
• April 2 AA #1216 from Tucson, Arizona, to Dallas, Texas (DFW)
• April 2 AA #3617 from DFW to Lafayette, Arkansas (NW Arkansas Regional [XNA])
• April 2 AA #5399 from NAR to St. Louis, Missouri
• April 2 AA #5498 from St. Louis, Missouri, to Cedar Rapids, Iowa

A reader points out that the CDC report is confusing with respect to airport codes. NAR is the international airport code for Nare, Columbia. The correct code for Northwest Arkansas Regional is XNA, located in Bentonville, AR.

Anyone who develops symptoms of mumps—headache, fever, sore throat, swelling salivary glands in the cheeks—within 21 days of the flight should see a doctor for further diagnosis and treatment. People who were vaccinated a while back are not necessarily protected against infection as their immunity may have worn off.

If you actually had mumps as a kid, you're almost certainly in the clear.

Read more about the ongoing outbreak in Iowa and six other states here, here and here. Dallas, Washington, D.C. and Detroit, Michigan haven't reported any cases yet but after looking at this list, doctors and health officials in those cities may want to be on the lookout.

Source:
http://time.blogs.com/global_health/2006/04/airline_passeng.html
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Fat Contained in Fast Food Varies by Country: Study

By Gene Emery

BOSTON (Reuters) - The chicken nuggets and french fries sold at a McDonald's in New York City may be more unhealthy than those sold in Europe, a study showed on Wednesday.

Three Danish doctors found widely varying levels of unsaturated fatty acid known as "trans fat" in foods purchased at McDonald's Corp and KFC fast food chains in 20 countries.

Studies show eating 5 grams of the fat per day increases the risk of heart disease by 25 percent.

In the large nuggets and fries meal, the amount of trans fat varied from less than 1 gram in Denmark to more than 10 grams in New York City, according to the research published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine.

KFC outlets in Denmark, Russia and Wiesbaden, Germany, had the lowest levels, and KFC outlets Hungary had the highest -- about 24 grams. KFC is owned by Yum Brands Inc..

Half the 43 servings tested contained more than 5 grams of trans fat.

The results show that "industrially produced trans fat can be eliminated without notable increases in the cost of foods or reduction in the quality or availability of foods," Steen Stender, author of the study, told Reuters.

Stender, of Gentofte University Hospital in Hellerup, Denmark, said local prices seem to determine what type of frying oil is used, and the content can vary within a country.

In the United States, the trans fat levels of the fries ranged from 5 grams in Atlanta to 7 grams in New York City.

Denmark's levels were low because the country has passed a law that limits the trans fat content of any food product to no more than 2 percent.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration this year began requiring food makers to list trans fat levels on their labels.

In February, McDonald's announced that it had understated the amount of fat and calories in its french fries. It had originally said its large serving of fries had 6 grams of trans fat. The company said the correct number was now 8.

© Reuters

Source:
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=healthNews&storyid=2006-04-13T003008Z_01_B397288_RTRUKOC_0_US-FASTFOOD.xml
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Old Big Brother Had a Farm

By Amanda Griscom Little
March 25, 2006.

If only Orwell could get a load of this.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is promoting a system that would have farm animal owners and livestock handlers attach microchips or other ID tags to their furry and feathered charges so they could be monitored throughout their lifetimes by a centralized computer network. The National Animal Identification System, as it's known, has been in development by the department since 2002, with help from an agribusiness industry group that represents bigwigs like Cargill and Monsanto.

Sounds like Animal Farm meets Big Brother. Yet, while some small-scale farmers are outspoken in their criticism of the scheme, many in the agriculture community say it's high time the U.S. more carefully tracked livestock. The question is how best to do it -- and the devil, as always, is in the details.

The vision, says Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, is to create a comprehensive high-tech tracking system that would eventually know the whereabouts of every cow, llama, hog, catfish, ostrich, and other farm critter in the nation so that animal-borne diseases such as avian flu, mad cow, and foot-and-mouth disease could be easily and systematically kept in check. If an animal were discovered to be a carrier of a disease, this system could supposedly track every location it had been in through the course of its life and the other animals it may have come in contact with; those exposed could then be killed before the disease spread out of control.

Some independent farmers are concerned that the costs of NAIS would be particularly burdensome for small-scale operators, who are already struggling to stay afloat. "It's horribly insidious," says Lynn Miller, editor of Small Farmer's Journal. "The USDA is poised to push us off our farms."

Dore Mobley, spokesperson for the USDA, counters that such claims are greatly exaggerated. "It's simply not true," she says, explaining that the department has no intention of putting any farmer, no matter how small, out of business. And though she acknowledges that farms of every size will have to share the costs of the program, she reasons that it is "an investment in the future of animal agriculture from which all will benefit."

Martha Noble of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, which advocates on behalf of midsize and small-scale farming, acknowledges that some form of tracking system may be necessary for public-health reasons. "We are not opposed to a tracking program, per se," she says. "We understand the need for effective monitoring of animals and disease, but there's a lot of disagreement about how is it going to be implemented, who is in control, and how is it going to be paid for."

Some small-scale farmers also suspect that the program was designed by big industry, for big industry -- and, indeed, there's no denying that industry had a heavy hand in it. According to Glenn Slack, president of the National Institute for Animal Agriculture, a trade group, "The program is largely based on a plan developed in 2002 through an industry-government collaborative effort facilitated by NIAA." NIAA represents, among others, the biggest meat producers in the U.S., including Cargill Meat Solutions and the National Pork Producers Council, and the makers of high-tech animal-ID equipment, such as Micro Beef Technologies and Digital Angel. The latter group, needless to say, could benefit directly from a nationwide animal-ID program.

Paul Shapiro of the Humane Society of the United States has taken no position on the program, but argues it could actually be better for the animals than current tagging methods: "If anything, microchips may be less invasive to animals than branding or ear-clipping, which has been going on for eons," he says. And according to Mobley, the ID program would enable officials to be more prudent in choosing which animals are killed in the event of a disease outbreak, rather than wiping out herds and flocks on a large scale, as has generally been the approach heretofore. (Granted, most of the animals are destined for the slaughterhouse anyway, but that's another story.)

I'm going to have to see your ID

The program -- which is thus far voluntary, but could eventually become mandatory -- is designed to unfold in three stages. First, farmers and producers would register the barns, factories, slaughterhouses, and even homes where their animals -- be they 10,000 cows, a dozen chickens, or a single potbellied pig -- reside and are processed.

Second, animals born or living on those premises would be assigned a 15-digit federal ID number and a tag -- in some cases, an implanted radio-frequency identification (RFID) device. But producers of certain species such as chickens and swine that are bought, moved, and slaughtered in big groups could be allowed to identify an entire lot with a single ID number -- a less time-intensive and expensive process. Critics argue that since factory farms are in the business of mass production of animals, this would present them with a cost advantage. Miller says this is a loophole that effectively "renders the whole program moot."

Third, data on each animal's whereabouts would be compiled and regularly updated in a centralized computer network, which the USDA expects to be up and running on a national scale by 2009 at the earliest. The department has suggested that animals' RFID tags could eventually be tracked real-time by a Global Positioning System, but there is no clear time frame for this scenario.

Many producers have voiced concern that if the government controls this kind of proprietary information about the purchase and sale of their products, the IRS or a competitor could get ahold of it through a Freedom of Information Act request. That's presumably much of the reason why, though the first two stages of NAIS are intended to be carried out by federal and state agencies, the USDA has decided that the third stage of the program should be overseen by private entities. Exactly which entities remains to be seen. (Johanns, who happens to be the former governor of a big beef-producing state, Nebraska, had at one point supported a proposal that would have a spin-off of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association take a leadership role in overseeing the database for much of the program. That didn't go over so well.)

Already some 200,000 large-scale facilities are voluntarily participating in stage one, having registered themselves on the state level, perhaps believing that a tracking program will eventually help demonstrate the safety of their meat products to overseas customers. Says NIAA's Slack, "In addition to providing a much-needed national emergency-response capability in the event of disease outbreak, NAIS will help enlarge the international market for U.S. livestock products."

A draft plan released by the USDA last April proposed making the program mandatory as soon as 2008, and indicated that there would be no significant federal funding assistance for the tagging process. The proposal ignited a firestorm of opposition within the farming community, and Johanns has since backed off the mandatory aspect.

The USDA hopes to release a revised plan by the end of this year, and it will likely leave to state officials decisions about whether to make the program voluntary or mandatory. The agency's NAIS coordinator, Neil Hammerschmidt, said in a speech last month to the cattle-industry group R-Calf USA that USDA isn't sure whether it has the authority to impose a federally mandated program that requires producers to report to a private entity.

In the meantime, states are moving on their own to put the animal-tracking system in place. Minnesota and Wisconsin have approved measures that make stage one of the NAIS program mandatory, according to Mobley, and Maine, North Carolina, Texas, Vermont, and Washington are considering similar legislation. The USDA has allocated more than $60 million to help states implement the animal-ID program, Mobley says.

Not safe, just sorry

What irks Mary Zanoni, executive director of Farm for Life, which works to protect the rights of small farmers, is that she believes the current USDA proposal would not make the U.S. meat supply appreciably safer. "Basically, the NAIS system would be of no use at all in dealing with the most common types of meat contamination in the U.S., the occurrence of pathogens such as listeria or E. coli in processed meat," she says. That's because when contaminants occur in industrial-scale quantities of meat -- as is often the case -- and are not discovered until the meat has been distributed through the supply chain, it is all but impossible to find the source. "There is no way to identify individual cows from one million pounds of hamburger," she says.

But would the NAIS help control the spread of mad cow or avian flu? "We have reams of scientific data that tell us without exception that by far the highest incidence of any transmittable contagion happens in industrial farm applications," says Lynn Miller. "That's where animals are in cramped, unhealthy conditions, and vulnerable to widespread disease outbreak." If the USDA wants to control disease, he says, it should develop standards for healthier animal conditions and then put in place a monitoring and tracking system solely for factory farms.

Zanoni sums up the views of many independent farmers: "Real food security comes from raising food yourself or buying from a local farmer you actually know. The USDA plan will only stifle local sources of production through over-regulation and unmanageable costs."

Amanda Griscom Little writes the Muckraker column for Grist Magazine.

Source:
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/33967/
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