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Strollerderby
Bisphenol-a, or BPA, is everywhere. It’s in the lining of every can of soup at your grocery store. It’s in the Nalgene bottle you’ve carried with you since college (though not in one you bought this year, since the company has stopped using BPA). It’s even in our dental sealants.
BPA shows up in the urine of nearly everyone living in North America.
Should we care?
Maybe. The science on whether or not BPA harms humans is mixed.
BPA is a known endocrine disruptor. In animals, BPA has been linked to obesity, cancer, and diabetes. Studies of it’s effects in people are harder to quantify, leaving medical researchers with more questions than answers. A growing number of scientists, advocacy groups and elected officials are calling for a ban on the chemical in food containers, especially those marketed to children.
With all the added expenses babies bring, it’s nice to know that you can fly them across the country to see grandma and grandpa without having to pay $350 for them to have their own seat. If they were to have their own seat, you’d have to travel with the car seat, which is another thing to carry and means you might have to pay to check in an extra bag that you can no longer fit on board. It sounds complicated, right? But the National Transportation Safety Board argues it’s much safer. They’ve recommended to the Federal Aviation Administration yet again that every passenger – even babies – must have their own seat on an airplane. This time, they’re referencing a specific crash to prove their point. Continue reading »
USA Today reports that at least 41 children have died so far this year in hot cars. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is considering petitioning automakers to include safety belt reminder chimes for all seating positions. Kids and Cars President Janette Fennell thinks that “these same chimes that sense if people aren’t buckled in should also warn if children are still buckled in cars after they’re locked.” The Consumer Federation of America and Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety agree.
While a chime might help in the case of distracted parents accidentally forgetting their child is in the back seat, what about parents who innocently leave their children in the car on purpose while they run into a store? It turns out, only 18% of hot car deaths from 1998-2009 were caused by parents who intentionally left their children in the car. 30% were the result of children playing in unattended vehicles (in which case the chime would be ineffective in preventing death) and 51% of the deaths involved children forgotten in cars. Continue reading »
The bad news about BPA just keeps coming.
We know the hormone-disrupting chemical leaches into our food and water through plastics, the linings of food and beverage cans and other household items. Over 90 percent of Canadians have BPA present in their bodies. The specter of BPA exposure is a huge stress for pregnant women.
But does it do any real harm? Industry lobbyists would like us to believe the chemical is safe for humans, but science just keeps turning up more evidence that it’s not.
A new study from Washington State University shows that even extremely small doses of BPA affect the ovaries of female mice. It takes only 12 hours for BPA to disrupt the formation of eggs and alter their ability to pass on genetic information.
That affects not only the lady mouse with the BPA exposure, but her children and grandchildren.
In fact, eating fish while pregnant is preferable, according to Dr. Mary Harris, professor of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Colorado State University. Harris says, “In research that studied maternal nutrition and how it affected babies, moms who ate the least amount of fish during pregnancy had babies with the lowest brain and eye test scores.” Adding, “Women who plan to become pregnant, are pregnant, or are breastfeeding are encouraged to eat two to three servings of cooked seafood each week, of which half (6 ounces) can be albacore tuna.”
Harris also says moms who eat three servings of fish each week have the brainiest babies; they speak earlier and have better social skills. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a study suggesting that, “Compared with women who ate the least fish, women with the highest fish intake (two ounces per day on average) had children 25 percent more likely to have higher developmental scores at six months and almost 30 percent more likely to have higher scores at 18 months.”
While it’s important to eat seafood during and after pregnancy, there are certain types of fish you should avoid. Continue reading »
Bedtime isn’t just about sleep anymore. Increasingly, how you handle your child’s sleep needs is being seen by researchers (and other parents) as a referendum on your overall parenting skills.
Those of you letting your little ones cry it out won’t be earning any extra credit. The debate about the best way to put a baby to bed still rages, ranging from fierce advocates of cosleeping to devotees of Ferber. But more and more, scientific research sides with the snugglers.
The Globe and Mail sums up several recent research studies about infant sleep and finds the consensus leaning towards a no-cry approach to baby’s bedtime.
Remember BPA? The chemical bogeyman in your baby’s bottles?
The Globe and Mail reports that nearly all Canadians tested positive for BPA in their urine. The average load was 1 part per billion. Sounds like almost nothing, right? Wrong. BPA is an estrogen-mimicking chemical, and that 1 part per billion is almost a thousand times more than the natural level of estrogen in our bodies.
Teenagers carry the highest load of the stuff, nearly 30 per cent more than other age groups.
With girls reaching puberty earlier, it’s really past time our governments stepped in and did something to remove this toxin from our homes.
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