I believe trees have magical healing power. If you’ve ever read The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, you know what I mean. If you have fond memories of sitting in a tree fort as a child, or climbing trees to look out and ponder the view from above, you know what I mean. Maybe you used to pick plums off trees in the backyard with your grandma or grandpa and just recalling the warmth of the sun on your back and the scent of the ripe fruit relaxes your shoulders on a busy day, all these years past. There’s just no question: trees are good, and they’re also good for you.

Trees minimize the effects of global warming by trapping CO2 emissions. They also cool your home naturally, reducing cooling costs. A potted tree within your home can improve indoor air quality almost immediately.

If you’re feeling anxious, watching a tree for a few minutes can reduce blood pressure and nerves. When my son was a baby, I could always count on taking him outside to stare at a tree as a balm during those newborn crying phases. The soothing was instantaneous for both of us.

Trees give us clean air to breathe, reduce noise pollution, increase property values, decrease water runoff and capture dust particles (so you have to do less dusting!). Make sure to plant trees that are native to your area so they’ll use less water, and support native wildlife. If you don’t have a yard, contribute to community tree planting efforts, or ask your local school, church or neighborhood center if they’d like a tree planted on their grounds.

During the holiday season trees take on an even greater poignancy as they pop up in households and storefronts around the world, warming the hearts of children and adults of all ages. With visions of sugarplums and Norman Rockwellian landscapes, we gather ‘yee round to string popcorn garlands around Noble Firs, place angels atop Virginia Pines, and even play dreidel games next to the newfangled Hanukkah bush. We hang “Baby’s First Year” decorations alongside family heirlooms from whom we can’t quite remember but we know it’s an anchor to years past, and ancestors perhaps long gone.

Planting a tree has become part of my family’s holiday celebrating. Every New Year’s we plant one together and share our dreams and goals for the coming year. But planting a tree is a great way to mark special occasions all year long. Like the start of a new school year, a birthday, or anniversary. You can save trees by purchasing items made with recycled, post consumer waste paper.

When buying a tree for holiday decor, look for locally grown trees, or trees that can be planted after the season. Avoid chemically sprayed trees. If you prefer a plastic tree, purchase used ones from eBay to avoid off-gassing of VOC’s (Volatile Organic Compounds) into your home. Compost trees that cannot be planted, or chip them and use as mulch in your garden. If you don’t yet compost, here’s a video to help you get started.

Of course reducing toxic exposures is an important way to reduce risks from unhealthy chemicals, but a growing body of research suggests paying attention to positive habits – such as good food, healthy sleep and active play can often reduce or even eliminate harm when exposed.

An update on this emerging field of research appeared in October 2011 in the NIH journal Environmental Health Perspectives, focusing on the physical effects of stress and relaxation.

Psychological stress can change how chemicals affect the body. Stress has been demonstrated to change the effects of lead exposure and of exposure to air pollution in children. But much remains to be learned about other chemicals and other types of exposures. And about how this all works.

We know that some stress is good for children; a little adrenaline or cortisol can fuel kids to reach new heights of achievement. And we know that when stress becomes too prolonged, too severe or too frequent the immune system can be altered in a way that increases the impact of chemical pollution.

Sadly, sometimes the most stressful environments are also the most polluted.

In January 2011, Science to Achieve Results (STAR) research grants totaling $7 million were awarded by the EPA to work on new approaches to understanding how stress changes what happens when kids are exposed – and what we can do about it.

I’m excited about this, and expect it to uncover valuable new knowledge. But in the meantime, common sense makes sense. Follow Healthy Child Healthy World’s Five Easy Steps: Minimize pesticide exposure; use nontoxic products; clean up indoor air; eat healthy; and be wise about plastics. And do what it takes to minimize un-useful stress. Have fun together!

Cooney CM. Stress-Pollution Interactions: An Emerging Issue in Children’s Health Research. Environmental Health Perspectives. 2011; 119:a430-a435.

Bringing the green indoors

Not only do houseplants bring both beauty and peace in our homes and they are able to break down these toxins by breathing in carbon dioxide and churning out oxygen thus making indoor air quality much cleaner. Yes, remembering to water them maybe challenging but engaging kids to help, can aid in the keeping them alive.

Here are some suggestions (and they are quite easy to find at a nursery).

• Most palms are great but others include: areca, lady, and dwarf date palm
• Rubber plants
• English ivy
• Peace lily
• Spider plant

I remember, not long ago, seeing many children with ear infections every day I was in the office – children that were often up screaming the night before. Today it’s not surprising to go an entire day in clinic without seeing a single one.

Visits to doctors’ offices for ear infections more than doubled between 1975 and 1990, from about 10 million per year to about 25 million per year. They kept increasing through about 1994, when they started to decline steadily by about 5% per year, now at their lowest level in three decades.

Over thirteen years, office visits for ear infections in kids under age 6 dropped from about 640 visits per 1000 children per year to about 380 visits. The drop for hospitalized children being diagnosed with an ear infection is even steeper. And the annual price tag for ear infection treatment in the US has fallen by about $2 billion.

Why the dramatic disappearance?

Several things have changed since the early 1990s. Air pollution, linked to ear infections, fell significantly after the Clean Air Act of 1990. Breastfeeding, protective against ear infections, increased modestly from less than 2/3 of babies starting on mother’s milk to more than ¾ today. A vaccine that may help prevent some ear infections came into wide use in 2002.

But the strongest link, according to a May 2011 study from researchers at Harvard University, came from a drop in tobacco smoke inside children’s homes. We’ve known since the 1990’s that exposure to second hand smoke causes millions of ear infections every year. In 1993, most US children were still exposed to tobacco smoke in their own home. Today only 14 percent of kids live in a home where smoking is allowed inside – a change big enough to account for the difference.

Four thoughts for responding to this good news.

1. If you smoke, smoke outside.
2. Keep the air in your home fresh. Avoid cleaners with harsh fumes. Consider houseplants to clean the air. Open windows when practical.
3. Given the option, breast feed. After weaning, choose foods that support healthy gut bacteria.
4. If your child does get an ear infection, choose a gentle treatment first, if appropriate. Antibiotics are wonderful, when needed, but each time they are given it makes another ear infection more likely. With more resistant bacteria.

Alpert HR, Behm, I, Connolly GN, Kabir Z. “Smoke-free households with children and decreasing rates of paediatric clinical encounters for otitis media in the United States.” Tobacco Control. May 2011; 20:207-211.

Bhattacharyya N and Shapiro NL. “Air quality improvement and the prevalence of frequent ear infections in children.” Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery. Feb 2010; 142:242-246

Most of us spend the vast majority of each day indoors, where air quality can be 2-5 times worse than outside. Indoor air quality issues revolve around environmental contaminants such as allergens and airborne chemicals.

• Chemicals that release fumes, called volatile organic compounds (VOCs), are in solvents, cleaning products, air fresheners, polishes, adhesives, paints, new carpeting and furniture. One study found that young kids in homes with high VOC levels were four times as likely to develop asthma.
• Dust mites and other indoor allergens love pillows and mattresses, and we often hear the statistic that up to 10 percent of the weight of a two-year-old pillow is made up of dust mites, living and dead, and their droppings. Enclosing mattresses and pillows in allergen-proof covers can keep the mites at bay, as can washing sheets and blankets in hot water weekly. Dust mite populations can also be controlled by reducing indoor humidity to below 60 percent and removing carpets from the bedroom.
• Stoves or heaters that burn gas, propane, kerosene, wood or charcoal produce carbon monoxide, and the gas can accumulate in poorly ventilated areas. Another dangerous source is from gasoline motors (such as cars or lawn mowers) that are running in enclosed spaces. Carbon monoxide is second only to heroin as a cause of death by poisoning in the US. A carbon monoxide detector is a simple tool that will give you peace of mind.
• One six-inch houseplant per 100 square feet of living area can filter VOCs and vastly improve your indoor air quality. Bamboo palms, Chinese evergreens and English ivies are the three best in removing formaldehyde, benzene and carbon monoxide from indoor air.
• Opening your windows to let polluted air out and fresh air in can noticeably improve indoor air quality.
• Household chores can help with air quality: dust often, keep your ducts clean and forego chemical cleaning products and air fresheners. Also, use a HEPA-filtered vacuum at least twice a week (plus a HEPA air purifier in a the bedroom of a child with asthma), and keep your plumbing in good repair to avoid mold growth.
• Keep the chemicals outside by taking your shoes off at the door to avoid tracking of contaminants, hanging dry-cleaned clothes outside before they make it to the closet and never smoking inside (better yet – take the pledge to never smoke!).

According to a groundbreaking new study, preschoolers with gas appliances in their homes scored lower on cognitive tests and were more likely to have ADHD than their peers. Researchers visited the homes of 482 babies in the first twelve weeks of life to count gas appliances in the homes and to install a device to measure average nitrogen dioxide levels in the kitchen over a two week period. Nitrogen dioxide is an odorless gas that can be released from cooking on a gas stove. Later, when the children were four years old, researchers performed detailed testing of their intelligence and behavior. They found a direct relationship between the number of gas appliances (especially unvented gas appliances), the level of nitrogen dioxide in the indoor air, and the odds of having ADHD (especially the inability to pay attention). They also found slightly lower scores on cognitive tests (especially on tests of verbal intelligence and on executive function). These associations remained even after adjusting for other potential factors such as breastfeeding, smoking or drinking during pregnancy, educational level, or income.

Some Kids Are at Higher Risk

The researchers also took DNA samples from the babies, looking for a gene related to the ability to detoxify certain environmental pollutants (the glutathione gene GSTP1). The antioxidant it produces can help to prevent damage from nitrogen dioxide and many other compounds. About half of the children were genetically less able to deal with exposures such as this. The associations in the study were much stronger for those children.

As an example, with children who had two gas appliances (e.g., a gas stove and a gas fireplace) and the protective form of the gene, they just have a typical chance of having ADHD and they score an average of only 2 points lower on general intelligence tests than their peers without any gas appliances. However, children without the protective gene but with the same exposure were almost seven times more likely to have ADHD by age 4 and scored about 10 points lower on intelligence tests than their peers: about 0.5 points lower for every 1 ppb of nitrogen dioxide that had built up in their indoor air. The gene made a big difference. So did the amount of nitrogen dioxide.

A Caution About this Study: Preliminary But Plausible

This appears to be the first major study of indoor air pollution and brain function. It’s important, but far too soon to draw firm conclusions. Moreover, the study was done in Europe, where there are countless differences from here in the homes and lifestyles. Even if the study were repeated here, and similar results found, this would only show an association between these things – not necessarily that one causes the other.

Nevertheless, there is a growing body of evidence linking outdoor air pollution with brain development. And there is strong evidence that for most homes indoor air pollution is worse than outdoor air pollution. And we do know that nitrogen dioxide causes cell damage and provokes an inflammatory response. Keeping indoor air clean seems wise, whether or not we have gas appliances.

Five Simple Things I Recommend (Including Spiders)

• I don’t recommend rushing out to change your appliances.
• I do recommend being sure your gas stove (and other gas appliances) have a fan and vent to outside of your home.
• Use your fan and vent when cooking with gas.
• Consider a spider plant in the kitchen! Senior research scientists from NASA tested the ability of spider plants to remove nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants linked to gas appliances from indoor air. They found that a single spider plant potted in a one gallon container could remove >99 percent of the nitrogen dioxide that had built up — within just six hours. I suggest one in every room where gas is burned. You may want two if the room is larger than 800 cubic feet (10 feet by 10 feet with 8 foot ceilings). This is an inexpensive, green insurance policy. Other plants may work just as well, but this is the only one I know that has been carefully tested for removing nitrogen dioxide.
• Bring fresh air into your home. Open windows when you get a chance – especially in the kitchen and especially at times of day when your impact on heating or cooling bills is low.
• Make fruits, vegetables, or whole grains a part of every meal. The antioxidants in the food we eat are an important part of our bodies’ ability to prevent and repair damage, including this kind of damage – but most of them don’t last for more than several hours at a time.

What You Don’t See

Each breath we take deepens the link between the environment and our bodies. Sometimes air pollution feels like it’s beyond our control. There’s more evidence all the time, though, that the most important air quality is in our own homes – especially for young children. Here we can make a difference, and it can be easy, inexpensive, and refreshing.

Morales, E, J Julvez, M Torrent, R de Cid, M Guxens, M Bustamante, N Kunzli and Sunyer. Association of early-life exposure to household gas appliances and indoor nitrogen dioxide with cognition and attention behavior in preschoolers. American Journal of Epidemiology 2009. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwp067
Wolverton, B.C., R.C. McDonald, and H.H. Mesick. Foliage plants for the indoorremoval of the primary combustion gases carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. J. Miss.Acad. Sci. 1985, 30:1-8.

I love it when I hear television interior designers talk about “bringing the outdoors in” and greening up a home with houseplants. Decorating your house with lush green plants does so much more than spruce up your living room. Houseplants are magnificent air purifiers, and they’re a great, inexpensive resource for reducing indoor pollutants.

I’m amazed at how effective plants are at filtering toxins from the air. The plant filters the chemicals, absorbing them through the leaves then breaking the contaminants down with the bacteria associated with their roots. As adults, we spend about 80 percent of each day indoors, and our kids might even spend more! The air in our homes can contain many volatile organic compounds (VOCs), chemicals that release fumes. VOCs are found in many solvents, cleaning products, air fresheners, polishes, adhesives, paints and carpets. Studies have shown that young children exposed to high levels of airborne VOCs were four times more likely to develop asthma, so I’m strongly in favor of anything we can do to reduce these toxins in our homes.

One study revealed that one six-inch plant per 100 square feet of living area is a good rule of thumb for greening your home. The healthier the plant, the more air it can filter.

Other Resources:
Parent Picks: How to Grow Fresh Air: 50 House Plants that Purify Your Home or Office
DrGreene Top Ten: The Top Ten Air-Filtering Plants

Can exposing the developing brain to environmental toxins lead to ADHD?

An upcoming study in the NIH journal Environmental Health Perspectives examined the effects of two substances known to affect the developing brain – cigarette smoke and lead. In their analysis, the authors calculated that 4.2% of kids in the United States between the ages of 4 and 15 are both diagnosed with ADHD and treated with prescription medications. This would represent about 1.8 million children. If a child’s mother smoked during pregnancy, the odds of a child’s developing ADHD were 2.5-fold higher, after controlling for other factors. If a child had a blood lead level higher than 2 mcg/dL, the odds of developing ADHD were increased more than 4-fold. (By comparison, the lead level at which the CDC recommends taking action to lower a child’s exposure is 10 mcg/dL.)

These exposures are so common that this would mean that about one out of three cases of ADHD in the US could be attributed to cigarette smoke or lead!

But ADHD has continued to rise while these exposures have fallen. Might there be other environmental exposures contributing to the problem? I would love to see a similar study looking at two other known neurotoxins: mercury and organophosphate pesticides used on our foods.

My wife’s name is Cheryl. When my youngest was a baby, she was radiant and full of life. We were enjoying parenting together, and enjoying being partners on DrGreene.com. She was responsible for the design, the engineering, the correspondence, the heart and the soul. I was the doctor responsible for answering parents’ questions. Life was good. No, great!

…until Cheryl discovered a lump in her breast. A chill went down our spines. But many lumps prove to be benign. The results of Cheryl’s biopsy hit like a truck (I know. I’ve been hit by a truck. But that’s another story). Cheryl had cancer. Stage III, high risk, inflammatory breast cancer. The prognosis was grim. She was diagnosed on March 22, 1996, and not expected to live to see the New Year.

Our life was shaken to the core. Reeling myself, I helped Cheryl navigate through the best treatment options for her specific cancer. Over the next year, she had four surgeries, 38 radiation treatments, and ten harrowing months of intensive chemotherapy².

Meanwhile, one of the pressing questions I was grappling with was “Where does breast cancer, this monster that had stolen our simple happiness, come from?” Like so many women with breast cancer, Cheryl did not have breast cancer in her family. But she grew up on a farm.

It turns out that farmers in the United States have higher rates of several cancers than we find in the American public at large³. Even though they are healthier than the general population in many ways, farmers appear to have higher rates of leukemias, lymphomas, myelomas, brain cancers, and cancers of the lip, stomach, skin, and prostate⁴. But it’s not just the farmers themselves who get sick; it’s their families as well. Farmers’ children have higher rates of reproductive tumors, leukemias, and brain cancers – kidney and bone cancers, too⁵.

Cheryl was a farmer’s daughter. Her family grew raisins on a beautiful farm in California’s fertile central valley. She described to me lying in her bed as a little girl and listening to the exciting rumble of the pesticide sprayers outside her childhood home, as the toxic fumes filled the air. But she thought of this as fun, not as a threat. And she grew up drinking water from a well on their farm, a water source we later learned had been contaminated with pesticides. She bathed in this water. Her family cooked with it. She drank it on hot, thirsty days over ice cubes made from the same water.

Several lines of reasoning suggest that the pesticides used on farms are partly responsible for the increased cancer rates we see in farmers and their families⁶. The structure and function of these chemicals, their effects on animals, and what we are learning about their effects on people are all reasons for concern.

Several of the first studies I read about pesticides and breast cancer were a startling wake-up call for me⁷. I strongly wanted my own children not to be exposed unnecessarily to these pesticides. And when I pictured in my mind where our food was coming from, how it was grown, I found myself not wanting our family’s food choices to put my family or any farmers’ families at increased risk. And the chemicals used on the farm don’t stay on the farm. They contaminate our air and our water; they travel in the fog rolling over our hills, and in the “pure” falling snow. The herbicide Atrazine has been measured in falling rain at concentration of 40 ppb. In scientific research on frogs, a concentration of only 0.1 ppb has been shown to cause severe hormonal problems, fertility problems, and gender confusion.

If these chemicals are hurting people and animals on the farm, how might they be harming the rest of us??? What else might they be doing? The enormity of what we still don’t know about their effects calls for making thoughtful choices, or what we call the precautionary principle. We need to be wise parents now, rather than just waiting for science to answer these questions.

More From Fathers for Organic:
Dr. Greene’s Organic Journey
Fathers for Organic – Part 1 of 7
Fathers for Organic – Part 2 of 7
Fathers for Organic – Part 3 of 7
Fathers for Organic – Part 4 of 7
Fathers for Organic – Part 5 of 7
Fathers for Organic – Part 6 of 7
Fathers for Organic – Part 7 of 7

Imagine for a moment the sound of 3 hours with a peaceful, happy baby. And imagine the opposite! About ¼ of babies will experience colic, defined as at least 3 hours of crying per day on at least 3 days of the previous week. Several factors, such as exposure to cigarette smoke, have been proven to increase the chances of colic.

The role of food in colic has been controversial, although several studies have shown improvement in some formula-fed babies when switched to an extensively hydrolyzed formula.  Breastfed babies can also develop colic. Does the mother’s diet make a difference? Researchers in Melbourne, Australia studied 90 babies who had developed colic in the first 6 weeks of life. Half of the mothers in the study went for one week without the most common allergy-causing foods: cow’s milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, soy, and fish. The other half had a control diet that contained all of those proteins. Neither group had food colors, preservatives, or additives. The results were published online in the November 2005 Pediatrics. At the beginning of the study week, the babies in the two groups averaged 690 minutes and 631 minutes crying per 48 hours. For those moms on the colic diet, 74 percent of their babies ‘improved’ within 1 week (where improvement meant at least a 25 percent reduction in that baby’s crying time – meaning tangible hours of relief for babies and parents). Even for those on the control diet, 37 percent of the babies ‘improved’ over the week – but those who ‘improved’ on the colic diet had greater reductions of crying time. At the end of the week, the difference between the two groups, on average, was 3 hours of crying per 48 hours. What a beautiful sound!

This study is the first randomized, controlled study to demonstrate a clear connection between a mother’s food proteins and the colic symptoms in her breastfed baby. We still have a lot to learn about the effects of diet on colic, but clearly diet can make a substantial difference.