I raised a related issue in Eternal Hostility that I expect is as true today as it was then.

Drawing on an article in Mother Jones magazine, I wrote:  

The 'pro-life' organizations and the broader Christian Right generally oppose, or have no position on, efforts to curb smoking -- even though one medical jounal published a survey of the existing medical literature and found that smoking may be linked to over 100,000 'miscarriages' or 'spontaneous abortions' annually in the U.S. alone.  Anti-abortion activist Pat Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition says he worked for a year to no avail to engage the major anti-abortion groups on the issue.  'It's hypocrisy,' Mahoney correctly declares.  Part of the reason for the schism is that the Republicans generally, as well as key polititians specifically, are also allied with the tobacco industry.  Mahoney observes for example, that 'It's obvious that Sen. Helms is more concerned about contributions from Phillip Morris than standing for the dignity of human life.'  Similarly Don Wildmon's American Family Association attacks corporate conglomerate Phillip Morris for sponsoriing television programs which depict homosexuality in a context of normalcy,but turns a blind eye to how the company presents smoking as a normal and acceptable lifestyle choice.

The Christian right has been very eager to promote news on studies showing that childbearing reduces incidence of breast cancer among women.

But, the possible implications have not been understood or noticed:

Many persistent environmental pollutants - POP's - are fat soluble, and most of those which are endocrine system disruptors are as well. This tends to be the case because fat-soluble compounds accumulate in human fatty tissues whereas water-soluble compounds are flushed from the human body almost as quickly as they enter.

So, POP's - including endocrine system disruptors - build up in breast fat cells. Consequently, there is a "flushing" effect during breast feeeding by which accumulated POP's are flushed from the breasts of nursing mothers......Into the hungry mouths of their babies.

I first raised this issue - as a blackly satrical online post - back in 2002, based on a news release of a Dutch study purporting to show that :

"prenatal exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxins can influence play behaviors that reflect gender differences....Higher prenatal exposure to PCBs was associated with less masculinized play behavior in boys and more masculinized play behavior in girls. In boys as well as in girls, higher prenatal dioxin levels were associated with more feminized play behavior."

Now, some of the methodology used, in that study, to parse "male" and "female" behaviors were somewhat dudious, but at that point the US NIH had already lent its imprimatur to the underlying science :

[ source  
This paper thus supports other studies (8,9) which have reported that lactational transfer represents a major source of PCBs and dioxins to the developing infant. ....

....It is important to determine whether the relatively subtle neurological, hormonal, and immunological effects noted in infants persist in the children as they grow up. While exposure during lactation is quantitatively highly significant, it is important to note that the effects observed in the children correlated with their prenatal, rather than their lactational, exposure.

By raising this as rather black satire, I was hoping to bypass the cognitive blocks that constitute the considerable denial surrounding this grotesque issue - and, to be sure, the greatest impact of endocrine disrupting POP's occurs at the earlier stages of embryonic development, not during breast feeding. But, the symbolic power of the very notion that nursing mothers are imparting poisonous chemicals to their nursing babies is especially potent.

In late 2004, I followed up with another blackly satitical post showcasing an Environmental Working Group  press release on one of the first general assessments of human manmade chemical "body burden" :

"In a study led by Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York...researchers at two major laboratories found an average of 91 industrial compounds, pollutants, and other chemicals in the blood and urine of nine volunteers.... Scientists refer to this contamination as a person's body burden. Of the 167 chemicals found, 76 cause cancer in humans or animals, 94 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 79 cause birth defects or abnormal development. The dangers of exposure to these chemicals in combination has never been studied."

One of the commentators on the forum I made the posts on made this eloquent comment:

I know a woman who works on this issue in California. In the course of a legislative campaign she got pregnant and had a child, and so she took the opportunity to have her breast milk tested. It tested positive for perchlorate. I can't imagine what it would be like to have a child and want to nurse it, but know that your milk contains poison. Even if breastmilk is still better than the alternatives, the knowledge that you are poisoning your child as you are feeding has to be one of the most extreme violations of basic humanity.

posted by alms at 2:23 PM PST on September 8 [ emphasis mine ]

Many plausible impacts can be identified, including sperm count declines, prostrate problems, reproductive problems in women (including miscarriages, tubal pregnancies, endometriosis, and breast cancer), and effects on intelligence, behavior and disease resistence.

In Pandora's Poison Joe Thornton builds on this research and offers some longterm solutions for the reversal of organochloride pollutants that are contributing to

infertility, immune suppression, cancer, and developmental disorders in humans and wildlife

by developing a precautionary principle.  

You would think that the conservatives who advocate personal abstinence could readily understand the need for corporations to abstain from further pollution.

by cyncooper on Sat Feb 11, 2006 at 11:13:44 AM EST

I am not saying that I disagree with the science behind the relationship between pollution and disease, but there are many who do, and for any number of reasons. What I am saying is that it is easier to anger people over a doctor who performs abortions than raise ire over this sequence of events: Coal burns, the plant emits toxins which are absorbed by clouds which rain on the land and the rain contaminates the water supply and you drink the water and it gets into your blood stream and into your milk ducts and then into your baby where it causes a disease.

There are too many steps, too much to think about and at the start of the chain is a faceless corporation not an individual doctor with surgical tools. Its just a thought, but I think that there is something to the simple cause-effect "abortion = dead baby" equation that is a more powerful motivator than the "coal + emissions + clouds + wind + rain + ground water + drink + breast feed = dead baby" equation.

The latter equation also requires science to demonstrate, and as the Discovery Institute's "Wedge" document amply shows "We don't need no steenkin science!" At least not science that requires natural explanations for what we see around us and what diseases we get. For those who reject materialism and seclularism a more valid model of disease is God's punishment for sin. You lost your baby not because the power plant down the road has been spewing murcury at hideous levels for years, but because you don't believe the right way.

by bybelknap on Tue Feb 14, 2006 at 04:38:27 PM EST