Food is the primary way people are exposed to many toxic pollutants. Even an infant's first foods, like breast milk, can be contaminated. Some food contaminants are first emitted from power plants or incinerators, then travel hundreds or thousands of miles by air before falling on croplands, lakes and grazing areas. Dioxins and mercury are global foodborne pollutants distributed this way. Industrialized agriculture also can increase the amounts of toxic pollutants, like pesticides, in certain foods or in the food chain. We help create safer, more sustainable foods by working to reduce toxic pollutants at their industrial sources, before they enter the food chain.

• Cleaning up Breast Milk
• Reducing Dioxins and Mercury
• Reducing Toxic Flame Retardants
• Reducing Pesticides

Cleaning Up Breast Milk
Many toxic pollutants, like dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and toxic flame retardants, concentrate in milk and other fatty tissues. Despite these contaminants, breast milk remains the best food for babies. We strive to clean up and preserve this precious first food by working to prevent pollutants at their source, so women don't have to think twice about breastfeeding.

Reducing Dioxins and Mercury
Dioxins are unintentional byproducts of human activities like burning chlorine-containing products, such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic or chlorine-bleached paper. An estimated 90 percent of human exposure to dioxins and dioxin-like chemicals comes from food, primarily from meat, fish and dairy products. Dioxins are known to cause cancer. They also disrupt hormone function, and can affect learning and development in children, even at very low levels of exposure. Infants and fetuses are more vulnerable to these toxic effects for a variety of reasons.

Mercury continues to be used in industrial, medical and household products like thermometers and switches. It is also a pollution byproduct of incineration, coal-burning, and taconite and chlor-alkali processing. Mercury emissions make their way into water bodies where they accumulate in fish in the toxic form of methylmercury. Virtually all fish now carry some level of mercury. It is a potent toxin to the young, developing brain. Even very low-level exposures to mercury in the womb can lead to later learning and developmental problems in childhood.

To help reduce dioxins and mercury at their sources, you can:

• Refuse to buy PVC and other chlorine-containing products, as well as mercury-containing products
• Join with Health Care Without Harm in urging hospitals to stop using products containing PVC plastic, chlorine bleach, and chlorine-bleached paper, or mercury-containing medical products.
• Support campaigns to more strictly regulate mercury emissions, including coal plant emissions, such as Mercury Free Minnesota, a campaign to phase-out mercury emissions in Minnesota from all sources.

Reducing Toxic Flame Retardants
Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are flame retardant compounds widely used in home and commercial products like textiles, foam and electrical equipment. Chemically similar to PCBs, they are toxic and persistent in the environment, in fatty meats and fish, and in human breast milk. Long-term research for PBDEs hasn't yet been completed to show exactly how exposures affect children and adults, but there is strong evidence of harm to young, developing brains in animals.

Our belief is that when toxic, persistent synthetic chemicals are found in breast milk, we should not wait for science confirming injuries to children to take immediate steps to clean breast milk of these pollutants. After the European Union and Sweden enacted regulatory controls on two major PBDEs in the late 1990s, the levels in Swedish women's breast milk declined precipitously. Absent any similar U.S. regulations, several states have enacted their own bans, including Maine, California, Hawaii and New York. Minnesota's bill to phase out these chemicals offered in the 2004 legislative session did not pass.

Reducing Pesticides
Pesticides are inherently toxic. They are designed to kill pests, often acting upon the same biological processes found in humans. An average person's body holds multiple pesticide residues, even in a newborn baby's blood and stool. The inherent toxicity of pesticides and our ubiquitous exposure, combined with ever-deepening scientific understanding of the negative impact of pesticides on long-term health, led Canadian physicians recently to conclude that parents should aim to reduce a child's pesticide exposure wherever possible. Using sustainable agriculture, one of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's largest research facilities has reduced pesticide use by 75 percent.

• Chlorinated pesticides. Chlorine-containing pesticides have been among the most toxic and persistent in body tissues and the environment. They have been linked to higher risks for cancer, miscarriage and pre-term births in humans, as well as near extinction of the bald eagle. People with higher levels of heptachlor epoxide and dieldrin are significantly more likely to be diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma (NHL), the 6th leading cause of cancer death in the United States. NHL is particularly common in the Upper Mississippi watershed. Bans of DDT, dieldren and heptachlor, among other organochlorines, over time have successfully reduced contaminant levels in body tissues as well as in foods. Other organochlorine pesticides, like lindane, continue to be used. In addition to its agricultural use, lindane products are intentionally applied to children's scalps to get rid of lice, even though safer alternatives are widely available.

• Atrazine. Atrazine is the world's most widely used pesticide; use is widespread on corn and soybeans among other crops. Atrazine contaminates groundwater and has been linked to higher risks of cancer - including Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, hormone disruption and frog disappearance. These concerns led the European Union recently to announce a ban on atrazine by 2005. Yet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on October 31, 2003 its approval for continued, unrestricted use of atrazine.

Hospitals and pesticides. IATP contributed to a 2003 Health Care Without Harm/Beyond Pesticides report highlighting pesticides as an avoidable hazard commonly present in hospitals. Of the major hospitals surveyed, 91 percent used chemical pesticide indoors and 77 percent used chemical pesticides outdoors on hospital grounds. Hospital patients who have compromised immune and nervous systems, the elderly, infants and children, and those who have an allergy or sensitivity to pesticides are particularly vulnerable to their toxic effects.