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Everyday Carcinogens: Acting for Prevention
in the Face of Scientific Uncertainty
by Dr. Sandra Steingraber
Author, "Living Downstream"
And here's where I think activism has a role to play. The reason that we have smoking laws that now protect us from second hand smoke, in airplanes and work places and hospitals and churches, isn't because we've finally developed absolute proof for a link between smoking and lung cancer. In fact, we only developed that link in 1996 when we finally identified the carcinogen that mutated the exact gene, it's called P53, that tricked the cell in the lung into becoming a tumor cell. That was a 1996 discovery.
| "Dioxin is found the breast milk of all nursing mothers in Canada and the US right now. And of all human food, human breast milk is the most contaminated with dioxin than any food you could possibly choose to talk about.
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But we got fresh air in the work place and we got smoke out of airplanes long before that. Why? Well, it's because the surgeon general in the US, and I can't speak for the Canadian story, but here in the US, in 1964 the US surgeon general announced smoking caused lung cancer. And he did so only on the basis of a few statistical associations and a couple of animal studies. He had the courage to act on good but partial evidence. And the reason we have smoke-free airplanes and smoke-free hospitals and churches and schools is because activists took that information and demanded clean air. It's the same way we got drunk drivers off the road. It didn't happen because we had yet another scientific study showing us how alcohol impairs the vagus nerve. It was because at some point Mothers Against Drunk Drivers lobbied and fought and got good laws.
So at some point we enough scientific evidence to take action and I do think we're at that point now with cancer and the environment and there's certainly a role for activism to play.
I'm going to conclude here by saying that the reason that I'm not there with you in person is because I am a new mother and it's a much more overwhelming job then I ever imagined and it's also an ecstatic one. It's also, I want to say, a very powerful thing, for a person like myself who's had cancer to become a parent. We who've had cancer become very accustomed to not looking too far into the future and having a child is a very long commitment. My daughter's name is Faith - and I'm learning what all parents must learn as I go through every week with her, it's a new kind of love, it's a love that is more than an emotion or a feeling, it's a deep physical craving, almost like hunger or thirst. It's a realization that I would lay down my life for this little person without a second thought.
| "Dioxin is manufactured in a way that's not deliberate. Nobody makes dioxin. It's a by-product of burning plastic and that's how Hamilton, Ontario is being contaminated, that's how New England has been contaminated." |
When you're a parent you discover these feelings that you'd never had, that you'd pick up arms for your child. You would empty your bank account. It's kind of love without boundaries and, you know, if this love were directed toward another adult, it would be completely inappropriate. It would be a fatal attraction. And a couple of my friends have suggested that, maybe, when directed at babies we should call this love 'natal attraction'. So I say this to remind all of us what's at stake here. If we're willing to die or kill for our children, wouldn't we do anything to keep toxins out of their food supply, particularly since we know that infants and embryos and children do exist in this world of exquisite sensitivity to carcinogens. And since dioxin is such an issue in Hamilton, let me just talk about that for a second.
Dioxin is found the breast milk of all nursing mothers in Canada and the US right now. And of all human food, human breast milk is the most contaminated with dioxin than any food you could possibly choose to talk about. And that's because it's one rung up on the food chain higher than the foods that we adults eat. Dioxin concentrates as it moves up the food chain so it's distilled one more step in my body before it goes into my breast. So my breast milk is ten to a hundred times more contaminated with dioxin than is cow's milk, cheese, meat, eggs, fish, etc. which would be the next highest contaminated group of foods, those made from animal flesh. This is why a breast infant receives its "safe", quote-unquote, lifetime level of dioxin within the first six months of drinking breast milk. And now that Faith is six months old, I can look at her and say, now I've filled you up completely with dioxin to a point that you're not supposed to be exposed to any more dioxin for the whole rest of your life. And I think about that every now and then when I'm breast feeding.
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| "...by poisoning breast milk, we have committed not a problem with lifestyle, but a problem with a human right" |
Dioxin is manufactured in a way that's not deliberate. Nobody makes dioxin. It's a by-product of burning plastic and that's how Hamilton, Ontario is being contaminated, that's how New England has been contaminated. It's primarily through incineration. There are some other ways of making dioxin but that's the main one. But even though it's an air pollutant, our route of exposure is not by breathing the air, it is through eating food. So the food that I have eaten is concentrated into my breasts and goes into the milk. Nothing I can do now in my lifestyle as a mother, as much as I want to protect my child, which is my most deep desire now, nothing I can do with my lifestyle can change that. Because it's not the dioxin I eat every day in my food - I could try to eat lower on the food chain and I do, to lower the amount of dioxin coming into my body - but this is dioxin that is laid down over my lifetime. Because when breast milk is manufactured, it's manufactured from fat globules all over my body, you know, in the liver, the fat apron around the intestines, etc. etc. The globules are carried into the breast and dioxin, pesticide residues or PCBs are in there, carried into the breast. So chemicals I was exposed to when I was a child, when I was a fetus, are now being mobilized and brought into the breast and into the mouth of my daughter. There's nothing I can do about that.
When we burn trash in New England and we burn plastic in it, especially PVC, poly-vinyl chloride, which is the most heavily chlorinated of our plastics, dioxin comes out of the stack, it drifts in the wind, it attaches to dust particles, those sift down and coat plants, plants are fed to animals and that is how it enters the food chain. The fat globules that then move into my breast are under the direction of pituitary hormones called prolactin, those are made into human milk. There's another pituitary hormone called oxytosin which carries that milk from the back of my chest wall into the sinuses, the milk-holding reservoirs right behind my nipple, and during the process called letdown, which is a kind of an amazing process in which milk is released from the breast and goes out into the mouth of the breast-feeding infant. That's how the process works. So, in other words, here's the connection. My milk contains dioxin from old vinyl siding, from discarded window blinds, from junked toys, from used IV bags, from plastic parts of buildings that have burned down accidentally, these have all found their way into my breasts and there's nothing I can do about this.
| "...those of us who are parents of any kind, need to become advocates for uncontaminated breast milk. A woman's body is the first environment. Whatever contaminants are in a woman's body finds their way into the next generation." |
But let me tell you something else I have learned about breast feeding. It's an ecstatic experience. The same hormone, called oxytosin, that allows milk to flow from the back of the chest wall into the nipple, also controls female orgasm. So the so-called letdown reflex is not an unpleasant experience. It's probably nature's way of making sure you remember to feed your baby. When the letdown reflex fills my breast with milk, it makes it feel like it's fizzing, like my breasts were a shaken up bottle of coke. And it's through the ecstatic dance of an infant suckling and this hormonal dance inside the mother that the breast-fed infant receives not just calories, but also antibodies. The immune system is developed through the process of breast-feeding, which is why breast-fed infants have fewer bouts of infectious diseases than bottle-fed infants. In fact, all of the milk produced in the first few days after a baby is born is almost all immunological in function. This milk is called colostrum. It doesn't only have antibodies, it has living cells drawn from my lymph system, that are swarming around in this milk. It also has laxatives to help the baby secrete all of the waste products. It has special sugars that actually guide the neurons in the brain for special and important brain development. So what I'm saying here is that breast feeding is a sacrament. It is not a lifestyle choice - and by poisoning breast milk, we have committed not a problem with lifestyle, but a problem with a human right.
And if there's ever a need to invoke the precautionary principle, it is here inside the chest walls of nursing mothers where capillaries carry fat globules into the milk-producing lobes of the breast. Breast feeding is a sacred act and I think it's a holy thing. And to talk about breast feeding versus bottle feeding - to weigh the known risks of infectious diseases against the possible risks of childhood or adult cancers, I think is an obscene argument. And those of us who are advocates for not only breast cancer and women's health, but also for children and those of us who are parents of any kind, need to become advocates for uncontaminated breast milk. A woman's body is the first environment. Whatever contaminants are in a woman's body finds their way into the next generation. And I think there is no better argument for the precautionary principle than that. And that is where activism and science meet...
Thanks very much.
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