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Transcript: Chemical in Breast Milk
A toxic chemical is turning up in breast milk. A new study reported shows the level is much higher in American than women in Europe.
Published September 22, 2003
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: All right, mothers, listen up. A toxic chemical turning up in breast milk. A new study reported in "USA Today" shows the level in American women is much higher than women in Europe. We get the latest now from CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen.
You can't help but miss the story on the front page of the paper. A lot of mothers, soon to be -- well, you're soon to be a mom again, I guess we could say, so you know a lot about this study and what's taking place. Let's talk about it, and just the amount of the toxins and how much of an affect this really has on our kids.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: All right, the first thing I want to say, when you see that banner headline across "USA Today," I'm sure nursing mothers across the country freaked out entirely. So we are here to actually calm their nerves.
Let's first talk about this study and what it did. It looked at just 20 women, which is a very small sample size, and it looked at whether or not these women had the toxins that are found in flame retardants, and flame retardants are on all sorts of things. I had no idea. It's not just clothing, it's carpets, it's computers. There are flame retardant chemicals all over the place. And again, what they found was those toxins are in the women's breast milk.
However, the amounts found in them, it's not clear whether those amounts mean anything. It's not clear whether it would actually make the babies sick. And considering that all of us are exposed not just to those chemicals, but to all sorts of chemicals every day, it's safe to say that probably all breast milk has some chemicals in it, and probably many chemicals in it.
So the bottom line is that we all breathe in chemicals every day. It's part of living in modern society, and you don't see all babies coming up with all sorts of horrible diseases, so that's important to remember. The thing that's really important to remember, and that all scientists can agree on, is that breast feeding is best, even if it does have the chemical in it. Breast feeding helps the baby's immune system and has so many other advantages that it's definitely something you should do, and don't worry about those chemicals, in comparison to the benefits of breast feeding.
Even the people who did the study say, we want women to be concerned, but not alarmed, we want them to keep breast feeding. So remember, that's the bottom line here, is keep breast feeding, even if there are some chemicals in the breast milk, probably in tiny amounts that won't do anything.
PHILLIPS: All right, so you're saying no matter what, women will have these toxic chemicals. So what can we do? There's got to be some things we can at least keep in mind to keep the levels down?
COHEN: Right, the group that wrote this report is called the Environmental Working Group. They're an environmentalist group. They're not a medical group, and this group says that you can make certain buying choices to limit the amount of these chemicals in your milk. For example, they say there are mattresses that are flame retardant, and there are mattresses that don't, and so you ought to buy the ones that don't.
However, you can't completely keep them out of your life. It would be impossible unless you wrapped yourself up in a bubble.
PHILLIPS: All right, Elizabeth Cohen, thank you.