Breastmilk Less Contaminated than Thought

Old barriers to breatfeeding are falling away.

In the past, mothers were told not to extend breastfeeding for fear of passing toxins stored in body fat to their infants. While the argument that even an extremely obese woman would have as many contaminants in her body as a 1200 pound cow didn’t hold much weight with many nursing mothers, it was widely believed and prevented many women from nursing as long as they would have preferred.

Researchers at Ohio State and Johns Hopkins universities have now found that infants are indeed exposed to toxins such as enzene, MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether), toluene and chloroform. The primary source of this exposure, however, comes from the air breathed inside their own homes (car exhaust is the primary source of the toxic gases in our air).

The good news, if you can call it that, is that the levels of these toxins in breast milk are actually much lower than than the “acceptable level” set for drinking water.

“We ought to focus our efforts on reducing indoor air sources of these compounds,” Sungroul Kim, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral fellow with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health was quoted as saying in a press release.

The researchers insist that while breastmilk is vulnerable to contamination, the benefits of nursing still outweigh the risks.

The study appears in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.