You believe you’ve done your very best as parents to create a healthy environment, ideally suited to the needs of a child, but have you considered what he/she has been exposed to in your home and environment during your pregnancy? What you clean with, breath in, touch and think, all have an impact on your baby’s health and happiness. Emotional and environmental toxins challenge your children from the instant of conception, and they will continue to barrage them (and you) throughout life unless you take control and make choices to live in a more conscious world. Individually and collectively, we can make simple but meaningful choices to increase our children’s odds of having a healthy life. What are you willing to do to save your child from the devastating effects of emotional and environmental pollutants? Are you willing to challenge the ways of the world for your child’s life?

We are seeing responses to environmental negligence and disregard in criminal proportion today as the actions of parents live on in their children. Over one million Vietnamese suffer serious health problems from cancer to birth defects due to their exposure to Agent Orange. Agent Orange, used extensively to remove forest cover during the Vietnam War, continues the war as children in Vietnam are born without eyes, limbs and missing organs. http://www.organicconsumers.org/Politics/agentorange031405.cfm. If you take the time to read the linked article, you will discover we can’t necessarily count on officials to support environmental change or back humankind once the damage is done. It must come from each of us.

Closer to home, Florida migrant farm workers are giving birth to children with severe birth defects resulting from their pesticide exposure in tomato fields. In the last three months alone, an equal number of children were born with birth defects including one child born without arms and legs because their mothers worked in the fields prior to giving birth. You can read more about this at http://www.organicconsumers.org/OFGU/birthdefects031405.cfm. Yet again, it is our responsibility to challenge the use of pesticides in all proportions and regions of the world.

From Africa to the U.S., efforts to mass-produce have led us to alter fruits and vegetables genetically, resulting in an even greater use of pesticides. According to the EPA, “The causes of a significant portion of birth defects are unknown, but research suggests that defects could be influenced by environmental factors.40 Several environmental contaminants cause birth defects when pregnant women are exposed to high concentrations. Mercury poisoning in Minamata, Japan, resulted in birth defects such as deafness and blindness.41 Prenatal exposures to high concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have resulted in stained and acned skin and deformed nails in children.42 However, the relationship between exposure to lower concentrations of environmental contaminants and birth defects is less clear.” (see http://www.epa.gov/envirohealth/children/features/s5.htm). Keep in mind that just because it is not yet proven, we are practically guaranteed that future results will indicate trouble from even minimal and passive exposure to environmental chemicals and pollutants.

Where will it end? It won’t. It simply cannot end until as a nation of people, as parents, as those who care about children, we put our foot down about the use of pesticides and all environmental and emotional toxins, and are willing to live with some inconveniences as a result. We want more. We want it faster. We want it to look better. We don’t want bugs in our environment and we don’t want them in our fields. The result—pesticides in our homes, gardens, farms and wherever else a bug can be seen; disinfectants that blind and even kill our children. From sprays to lotions and potions, we might be ‘clean’, but we’re deadly to those with the greatest need to trust us—our children.

We have alternatives, and some are taking action to increase the information available to us about those alternatives. Here are three things you can do to minimize your risk during pregnancy and every day to minimize your exposure to pesticides.

1. Add OrganicConsumers.Org to your browser’s bookmark list to stay abreast of the most current actions taken on behalf of eliminating pesticide use in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world.

2. Go through your cupboards and garage and look for every container with a warning. If you can’t eat it—eliminate it—it can’t be good for you or your children.

3. When you shop for produce, look for the growing organic section and shop there. If products are certified as organically grown, they are grown without pesticides and will be safer for your consumption.

We cannot afford to sit back and wait for something to change in our world. It is NOT going to change by itself. It is up to us, each of us, to make changes where we can and to commit to global change through our own actions. Children depend entirely on the choices of their parents. Let’s commit to making them consciously.

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