“For nine months, you are given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to provide the entire environment that gives your baby a stronger and healthier start on life. There will never again be such a level of control over the way your child’s environment influences his or her development.”
-Fit For Birth Prenatal Wellness Course
I recently had the chance to join my friend Jenn Taylor Campbell, founder of Becoming Parents Doula Services, on her podcast where we discussed the pollutants, toxins and chemicals that live in our homes and why its so important that we do what we can to minimize them. Here is a summary of our discussion and you can check out the podcast here.
Let’s start with historical trends
If we look back through the last 100 years, we start to see a very clear trend with regards to toxic chemicals:
- A new chemical is created and used.
- People eventually find that it has some toxic effects on the human body
- That chemical is banned.
- Now here’s the important part: A replacement for the banned chemical is newly introduced; one that has not yet been identified as harmful.
Regulatory agencies simply cannot keep up with the chemical introductions. “…personal care products are governed by the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act, which requires no government review of products before they go to market.”
Here are a few historical examples:
- 1947 – DDT wallpaper determined to be toxic
- 1978 – Lead paint banned
- 1986 – Asbestos was banned from schools (finally banned from most countries in 2005)
- 2004 – Flame retardants banned
- 2013 – BPA banned from baby bottles and children’s spill-proof cups
- 2022 – FDA petitioning to limit BPA in food packaging
How do chemicals enter your body in the first place?
- Breathing – phthalates used in household products (deodorants, shampoo, body lotions)
- Skin Absorption – nanocosmetics
- Ingestion – 32 lip products contained various heavy metals, including lead which can cause miscarriages, and cadmium which can “halt the pregnancy” or produce “birth defect.”
Did you know some pollutants and pesticides do cross the placenta?
A 2004 EWG (Environmental Working Group) study found 287 unnatural chemicals in umbilical cord blood. Of these chemicals, 180 were established to cause cancer, 217 were known to be toxic, and 208 were linked to birth defects or abnormal development.
The average woman’s daily routine exposes her to at least “168 unique ingredients every day” although that number may now be as high as 515.
So what are the epigenetic effects of toxins on pregnancy?
- 2011 Reproductive Toxicology – “prenatal exposure to diverse environmental chemicals dysregulates the fetal epigenome, with potential consequences for subsequent developmental disorders and disease manifesting in childhood, over the life course, or even transgenerationally.”
- Transgenerational = Acting across multiple generations.
- 2017 Genes – “…prenatal exposure to environmental factors that affect the epigenome…can disrupt gene expression programming in the embryo/fetus, resulting in developmental deficits, including abnormal brain development that can lead to later-life behavioral disorders.”
Three Considerations When Making Healthful Changes:
Take inventory of:
- Products that you believe will be easiest for your family to change.
- Products that you are currently using frequently.
- Products that your intuition tells you may be most important to change right now.
4 Action-Steps for reducing household toxins
- WATER – Filter your drinking water
- INGREDIENTS – Look for a short list of ingredients that you can pronounce.
- SOAP/SHAMPOO: Saponified oil instead of diethanolamide
- LOTIONS: Coconut oil & Shea butter instead of parabens (methylparaben, propylparaben, etc)
- AIR FRESHENER: essential oils instead of 1,4-dichlorobenzene or “fragrance”
- COSMETICS: “phthalate-free”
- INTUITIVE BALANCE – Find the balance that feels right for you: “Any ONE chemical is NOT likely to be the sole cause of chronic disease, deformity, etc in the unborn baby. It’s when your body has to manage all the chemicals, that it can get overloaded….generally aim for a more natural life, choosing mostly natural ingredients that you can pronounce…”
- Run, even though you’re breathing some exhaust
- Eat canned sardines, even though you’re eating canned chemical packaging
- Pump & store breast milk, even though it will next be served in a bottle
- DEET-repellent outweighs the effects of Zika (try to plan activities when mosquitos are far less present)
- MINDFULNESS – Make a practice of mindfulness to ensure your resiliency.
- 2020 Frontiers in Psychology – “…some authors have traced the effect of meditation…to specific mechanisms that regulate gene expression” Mindfulness and compassion meditation affects methylation regions corresponding to at least 43 genes involved in immune metabolism, glucose homeostasis, lipid metabolism, protein folding, neurotransmission, and modulation of inflammatory pathways (more rapidly for experienced meditators).
- 2018 The Telomere Effect – “Telomeres tend to be shorter with negative thinking. But they may be stabilized or even lengthened by practicing habits that promote stress resiliency.” Factors making up stress resiliency include practicing: meditation, being present, being conscientious, waking joyfully, self-compassion, feeling purpose, adopting a challenge-response (rather than defeatism), and self-discipline.
- What’s amazing is that this ONE category of positive epigenetic change, Mindfulness, is potentially enough to entirely overwrite the negative epigenetic effects of household toxins. Happy thinking!
I hope this information has been helpful in navigating the products you use in your home and empowering you to come up with a reduction plan that works for you and your family. These substances are particularly harmful if you are planning to be pregnant or are already pregnant, so for a deeper dive into how to have the healthiest pregnancy possible, check out our Prenatal Wellness Course.
Best,
James Goodlatte, Founder of Fit For Birth
REFERENCES
https://www.ewg.org/research/body-burden-pollution-newborns#.WwSVc2gvxD8
https://www.ehn.org/bpa-in-food-2656483480.html
https://www.ewg.org/skindeep/2004/06/15/exposures-add-up-survey-results/#.WwbYq0gvxD8
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-cosmetics/average-uk-woman-wears-515-chemicals-a-day-idUSTRE5AI3M820091119
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/6603483/Women-put-515-chemicals-on-their-face-and-body-every-day-in-beauty-regime.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/beauty/article-1229275/Revealed–515-chemicals-women-bodies-day.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3171169/
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5368708
- Venditti, et al. Molecules of Silence: Effects of Meditation on Gene Expression and Epigenetics. Frontiers in Psychology. Retrieved 12/14/22 from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7431950/
2018. Blackburn & Epel. The Telomere Effect: A revolutionary approach to living younger, healthier, longer. Book. Orion Publishing Group Ltd.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/30/fda-cosmetics-health-nih-epa-environmental-work
*For a complete list of references, please refer to Fit For Birth’s Prenatal Wellness Course, Section 7.