During her five-and-a-half-year battle with infertility, Julieta Pisani McCarthy bought organic foods and chose personal care products free of synthetic ingredients such as parabens and phthalates. And when she finally did become pregnant with her first son, Nicolas, she continued her diligence, including ridding her home of any furniture foam that might contain chemical flame retardants.
McCarthy worried that environmental chemicals could have contributed to her difficulty conceiving. Once pregnant, she worried that toxins could harm her child’s healthy development. Such fears are shared by many Americans. More than 80 percent of those polled in 2009 were concerned about the lack of safety testing for chemicals on the market in the U.S. Yet McCarthy didn’t find her doctors forthcoming when she posed questions about pollutants, such as PCBs and pesticides, which have been found in nearly all samples of breast milk and cord blood, per studies from the University of California, Berkeley; the nonprofit Environmental Working Group; researchers in Quebec and others…read more