Mothers make a difference everyday in shaping the future of our planet – from wiping noses to raising kids who care about the world they live in.

Nothing is more powerful than the drive to protect one’s child. When Stella’s lead levels were high, a SWAT team of motivated and genuinely concerned inspectors crawled all over our house to find the source – but they didn’t. I did. Why? Because I was insane with concern and up all night checking every possible source, until I discovered the antique chair with red leather cushions, which I realized were painted. (Red paint has one of the highest levels of lead.)

We stop at nothing to protect our children. But in this age of over-information and endless choices, one of our biggest jobs is to stop ourselves from going crazy with worry.

Talking with other parents and creating or joining neighborhood parent listservs where people can solicit ideas and feedback are great ways to build common knowledge and benefit from the wisdom of the group. Other resources, like simple suggestions to reduce exposure to toxins, as well as links to lists of fruits and vegetables with the highest pesticide amounts, can be found at SafeMilk.org

Do you have tips or ideas that you’d like to share? Please pass them along!

I live in Bernal Heights in San Francisco, a neighborhood known as ‘maternal heights’ for its stroller rush hours and toddler-filled sidewalks. There is a listserv of more than 500 families in Bernal, with posting ranging from ‘Anyone pick up a pink stuffed bunny at Holly Park on Saturday?’ to ‘Please send suggestions for empowering films for young girls.’ A frequent subject though is how to find safe baby bottles, flame-retardant-free crib mattresses, and eco-friendly gear.

Last week I sent a poll out to the Bernal parents listserv to find out how my neighbors felt about environmental health and our children. The findings are below:

More than 90% of those responding consider themselves environmentally minded – they buy organic food, though don’t have to ‘talk themselves off the ledge’ when feeding their children conventionally grown food. They buy bisphenol-free baby bottles, and 10% are upset that they didn’t have that choice when their child was using bottles.

71% have products in their houses that they have concerns about (in terms of environmental health.) Here’s what they’re concerned about:

• Cleaning supplies (10 people mentioned this)
• Plastic toys, gear, feeding supplies, pacifiers (7 people mentioned this)
• Flame retardants in furniture, carpets and mattresses -(4 people mentioned this)
• Sunscreen, lotions (3 people mentioned this)
• Paint, cups, sofa set, etc.

They had a lot to say about their feelings around all of the information we’re receiving about the potential contaminates we’re exposed to. Here are some of their responses;

• Important to know, have to ignore some…too much.
• Overwhelmed!
• I think about it a lot and try to avoid them as much as possible.
• Aaaagh!
• It shuts me down and makes me hopeless.
• It is not communicated in a reasonable manner – it is either extreme or nothing.
• I feel like we’re under assault by the chemical industries. It feels like we’re in an unrestricted experiment that could have bad results for all of us. I also figure that not just my kids, but I myself am contaminated with trace amounts of dangerous chemicals.
• Mixed feelings–would love the CDC to measure the levels of all of these things in everyone’s system so we could know what we are dealing with instead of guessing and speculating.
• I am concerned, but not to the point of going crazy.
• I am definitely concerned about all these things, but also unfortunately have to balance out our financial situation with “solutions to these issues” in our lives.
• I try to stay in the middle. I feel that some people may be too paranoid, so I try to only believe in reliable sources and I don’t trust everything I read. The larger issues leave me feeling helpless.
• It’s frustrating because it seems in our effort to make things more efficient, safer we have in turn made life more dangerous and complicated. UGH!
• Freaked out and annoyed.
• I am somewhat anxious about it. I am less overwhelmed based on an article that points out that #5 plastics are considered safe. I still don’t microwave anything in them, but am relieved to find that there is a “safe” plastic.

A little less than half of them felt like they could make sense of it all, and far less than half said they were a part of an organization that helps them feel empowered to protect your kids (and themselves) from exposure to these things.

Organizations they mentioned include: Organic Consumers Association, Sierra Club, NRDC, Environmental Working Group, and Moms Rising.

There are 85,000 chemicals in use today in the U.S. Seven new ones are approved every day. Less than 10% have been tested for long-term effects on grown adults, let alone on the most vulnerable – developing children. The chemical industry is out of control.  They may not be testing on animals, but they are testing on us and on our children.

Prior to having children, I considered myself an activist. But nothing prepared me for the type of activism that parenthood necessitates. Luckily for me, my daughters are growing up at a time when parents are using their political power to demand adherence to that old adage, ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,’ (known in the environmental health community as the precautionary principle.) In California, we see this political muscle flexed with the passage of a bill that bans bisphenol A in baby products. Beyond politics, we see the standard shifting as celebrity moms set the trend for green nurseries and baby gear. Mothers across the country increasingly vote with their dollars at the checkout line, selecting eco-friendly options of the basic necessities.

Are there organizations that you are involved with that address these issues or keep you informed?

During a week-long beach vacation marked more by flash flooding than sunblock, three friends and I sat together nursing our five infants, (Nico, Olivia, Stella, Hazel and Sam,) and sharing endless pints of ice cream and tales of new-mother fears and elations. Our friend Mary talked about a news report she had heard one night about flame-retardants in breast milk, and of course, that sent us all reeling in horror. Nursing a child is one of the most intimate, natural and bonding gifts of motherhood, (while simultaneously painful and difficult at times,) and to think that it was being invaded by something so unnatural as flame-retardants sent us spinning. Given our backgrounds, (we all came from the world of environmental activism,) it didn’t take long before we moved on from shock to action. Though it took a few month to get things rolling, our organization MOMS – Making our milk safe – was really born on that trip.

MOMS’ mission is to protect the health of our babies by eliminating the growing threat of toxic chemicals and industrial pollutants in human breast milk. We believe that breast milk is the best source of nutrition for our babies, and we want to keep it that way.

Organizations like MOMS and MomsRising help connect mothers around the country and keep them informed. Most importantly, they give the power to parents to demand the protection that our children deserve.

Do you feel empowered by the political organizing that is happening in the field of environmental health, or do you feel bombarded by the seemingly endless stream of new information about potential health hazards that pops up on the screen every time you open a news website on your computer?

When my daughter Stella celebrated her first birthday in the spring of 2005, we had her checked for lead, and her level was dangerously high. Here I was fretting about the type of plastic used in her baby bottles, cooking homemade organic baby food, and obsessing over the quality and contents of all that she and I consumed, and I didn’t even think to wonder if she was being exposed to known neurotoxin like lead. If she hadn’t been tested – further – if no research had ever been done on lead – I wouldn’t have been able to protect her. But because of that test I was able to protect her, and she’s totally healthy. Words cannot express how thankful I am for that test.

Just around the same time that we went through our lead scare, I started to hear about flame-retardants and bisphenol exposures and effects in children, and I started wondering what Stella was being exposed to that I didn’t know about – that there was no test for yet. And what would be the ramifications of that exposure. What is the next lead, or arsenic or thalidomide or DDT? Do you wonder about environmental health issues like these?