I had decided early on that I wanted to try and breastfeed my baby, while also knowing if things did not work out, I was allowed to change my mind. With support from my husband, education from my lactation consultant, and comradery from fellow nursing moms, I successfully breastfed my baby through the generally recommended time of  two years.

But recent news shifted my thoughts and had me wondering if I had unknowingly hurt my child.

A recent study shows the presence of 25 different toxic flame-retardant compounds, known as Brominated Flame Retardants (BFRs), in the breastmilk of American women. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, exposure to BFRs can lead to an increase in cancer, hormonal disruption and significant developmental delays in infants and children and lower IQs.

Learning this sent me into immediate panic. I could not help but wonder if I had already, within a 2.5-year span, drastically impeded my son’s development and long-term health. I could not help but feel like I was the problem. I am not.

During the first few months of learning how to breastfeed and pump, I often found myself filled with doubt and worry. Was I producing enough milk? Is my baby hungry? Will my supply decrease?

I thought about quitting more times than I care to admit. Looking back now, I was a tired, worried new mom, but my baby’s health was never in question. I had left that space of self-doubt related to nursing behind me a while ago, only for those feelings to come right back after learning about BFRs in breastmilk.

My decision to breastfeed was based on science and the practicality of my life. Environmental regulations need to be in place to ensure optimal outcomes of such decisions.

These chemicals are commonplace and have been for decades. Used to reduce combustion in everyday products, BFRs are found in household items such as furniture and electronics. Exposure can occur when the chemicals separate from products and are then inhaled or ingested through dust.

This is not the first time flame retardants have been found in human breastmilk. First detected in the U.S. in the 1970s, flame retardant chemicals entered the food chain by way of dairy farms and into the breastmilk of Michigan nursing mothers. The presence of flame-retardant chemicals in breastmilk is not exclusive to the United States.

Popular from 1970-1990, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), a type of Brominated Flame Retardant, were used in numerous household products such as mattresses and TVs. Found in alarmingly high concentrations in human breastmilk, and known for their adverse effects on humans and wildlife, PBDEs were eventually phased out of production and use.

Since the phase out of PBDEs, other chemically similar, and lesser studied, compounds, such as Bromophenols have been used by manufacturers. For the first time, Bromophenols were found in an overwhelming majority of samples in a recent study of human breastmilk in the US. A recent study shows bromophenols, structurally similar to thyroid hormone, can have an adverse impact on an individual’s thyroid function.

But more recent efforts over the past decade to regulate of Brominated Flame Retardants (BFRs) seems to work.

 The concentration of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in human breastmilk and in children within the U.S. has decreased since its phase-out began over 10 years ago.

While the phase-out of PBDEs was largely voluntary, many states, such as California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Oregon, Vermont and Rhode Island have laws in place regulating various classes of BFRs.

A recent law passed in New York, set to take place in 2024, bans the sale of electronic casings, furniture, and mattresses with halogenated, organophosphorus, and organonitrogen flame retardant chemicals.

These chemicals have negative health outcomes, including infertility, cancer, and delayed fetal and child development. In 2021, the European Union banned the sale of televisions with halogenated flame retardants in their casing; research continues on the impact of various BFRs.

How to feed our babies is one of the earliest decisions parents make. Whether to breastfeed/ pump, use formula or a combination of both, these decisions are based on various personal and practical factors. There is a risk-benefit analysis with each decision; parents always striving to choose what is best for their families.

Without continued and updated regulation, it seems between flame retardant chemicals in breastmilk and repeated formula recalls, the risk-benefit analysis of parents is severely undermined, and many are left with limited to no options on how to feed their babies safely.

Thankfully, my son is a healthy, inquisitive, observant, and all-around silly toddler. With those hard early days of nursing behind me, I can reflect and appreciate the tremendous work my body did sustaining myself and my baby.

I already miss the absorbent amount of snuggles that come with being a nursing parent. Like most moms, I am always going to worry. With necessary regulation, the impact and presence of toxic chemicals in breastmilk does not need to be a top concern. As a society, it is our job to do what is in the best interest of all children.

]]> https://visiblemagazine.com/did-breastfeeding-hurt-my-baby/feed/ 0 9162 https://visiblemagazine.com/false-sense-of-shelter/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=false-sense-of-shelter https://visiblemagazine.com/false-sense-of-shelter/#respond Mon, 30 Mar 2020 13:48:33 +0000 https://visiblemagazine.com/?p=4015 The constant drumbeat of news of the global pandemic of COVID-19 may render a false sense that mass shootings and violence are somehow stalled and that the 1.5 billion people around the globe who are sheltering in place are safe.

They are not.

Earlier this month, 18 people were shot and killed at a club in Cleveland.  According to The Trace, a site that daily tracks mass shootings, “seven were shot at a house party in Chicago; a 13-year-old boy was killed  five other teens were shot during an altercation at a shopping center outside of Baltimore; six were shot, including a 5-year-old, at a barbershop in Washington, D.C.;  four were shot, one fatally, at a club in Milwaukee; four  were shot at a house party in Albuquerque, New Mexico and four were shot on a freeway in the Chicago suburb of South Holland, Illinois.”

School shootings have stopped; most likely only because in all 50 states, schools are closed either varying by district, for a specified time, through the end of the school year, or indefinitely.

But the trauma of the ongoing violence around the country and the school shootings of the recent past is ongoing for many, felt for generations by those directly and indirectly impacted.

During COVID-19, the assertion that home is an automatic safe refuge is false. These perpetual acts of violence—still happening during the pandemic — take away the fundamental right to raise children in a safe and sustainable community.

The human right to raise children safely,  along with personal bodily autonomy, and the right to both have and not have children is reproductive justice, as defined by Sister Song.

As a sexual and reproductive health educator in Texas, I see every day the intersection of the need for reproductive justice and the country’s violent history against brown and Black bodies.  I hear from my students that  parenthood is not marked by educational attainment but instead moving somewhere safer with more opportunities.

A  young mother, my student, was in tears recently when she learned the zip code she and her family reside in produce more inmates than any other zip code in Texas.

The combination of a zip code and skin color makes her son, less than 24 months old, a target for mass violence in the school to prison pipeline. Safe and sustainable communities are not accessible to all.

The goal of mass violence is to intimidate and terrorize specific groups of people. Throughout history, brown and Black bodies have been terrorized and subjected to mass violence since the founding of this country.

Before colonization, the area that is now the United States was home to indigenous people such as the Coahuiltecans, and Lakota People.

In 1830 through the Removal Act signed by President Andrew Jackson, indigenous people were legally and forcefully removed from their land in an act of mass violence  killing many.

 As a result of colonization, indigenous people’s human right and reproductive justice to raise children in a safe and sustainable communities was and continues to be outright ignored.

From the arrival of “19 and odd” enslaved Africans in 1619 to the passage of the 13^th amendment in 1865, Black bodies were legally terrorized and subjected to dehumanizing acts of violence.

Uteruses of Black women were commodified. The dollar bill had more value than autonomous reproductive decision making of human beings. Enslaved people, as the country’s economic backbone, ensured the United States was a safe and sustainable community for the children of white women.

Today, reproductive justice and acts of mass violence such as the shooting at Emanuel AME church in Charleston, SC, where nine black church members were intentionally murdered, are inextricably linked.

As an Afro-Latina, I live in this intersection of violence and reproductive justice. As someone who attended Wednesday night bible study at a historically Black church with my dad, that could have been us.

It has been a little over half a year since a white supremacist drove over 11 hours to a Wal-Mart in El Paso, Tx with the intent to kill brown bodies.

The day after the attack on brown bodies in El Paso, while carrying out my nightly routine, I felt my throat tighten. My knees buckled. In the middle of my normalcy, panic was taking over. The shooting in El Paso, like the shooting of Trayvon Martin, was a gut-wrenching reminder that mass shootings and other acts of violence target the bodies of people who come from uteruses like mine. Not White.

For some, it is easy to disconnect from history, especially those who have benefited from the power imbalance.  However, the attack on reproductive justice continues to be very real and often covert.

Forceful removal from land and the lack of safe and sustainable communities has had many iterations, including: redlining, subprime loans and housing displacement due to gentrification, all of which disproportionately affect brown and black individuals.

Shelter in place is a directive from local, state and federal officials during COVID-19.

But for historically terrorized groups, nowhere in the United States is there a safe and sustainable community for their children.