parenting

Umbra on having kids, revisited

Dear Umbra, What do you feel is the one issue of personal responsibility regarding the environment that people ignore the most? VaughnJackson, Tenn. Dearest Vaughn, Reproduction. But what can you do? As I said the other time I touched this topic with a 10-foot pole, we don’t make childbearing choices based on politics. If we […]

Betsy Rosenberg, green radio-show host, answers questions

Betsy Rosenberg. What work do you do? I’ve gone from 20 years of general news reporting and anchoring for the CBS Radio network to creating an environmental radio minute to hosting and producing a one-hour nationally syndicated eco-awareness program called EcoTalk. I transitioned from journalist to activist a few years ago when, in the wake […]

How toxic is your breast milk?

A nice treatment of this topic in today's New York Times Magazine, from Florence Williams.

When we nurse our babies, we feed them not only the fats, sugars and proteins that fire their immune systems, metabolisms and cerebral synapses. We also feed them, albeit in minuscule amounts, paint thinners, dry-cleaning fluids, wood preservatives, toilet deodorizers, cosmetic additives, gasoline byproducts, rocket fuel, termite poisons, fungicides and flame retardants.

If, as Cicero said, your face tells the story of your mind, your breast milk tells the decades-old story of your diet, your neighborhood and, increasingly, your household decor. Your old shag-carpet padding? It's there. That cool blue paint in your pantry? There. The chemical cloud your landlord used to kill cockroaches? There. Ditto, the mercury in last week's sushi, the benzene from your gas station, the preservative parabens from your face cream, the chromium from your neighborhood smokestack.

Williams very effectively uses the personal angle of breastfeeding her daughter to approach the larger topic of toxic substances in our environment, brominated flame retardants (PBDEs) in particular. Yes, it's a highly approachable article on flame retardants -- imagine that.

Umbra on diaperless parenting

Dear Umbra, I have a baby on the way. Due to prodding by my wife, I have begun to think about things such as diapers. Babies make a lot of boom-boom, and wrapping it all up in a bundle of plastic diaperness, tossing that in a plastic sack, and then tossing the lot in a […]

Umbra on having kids

Dear Wonderful Umbra, I truly love your column. You should give humor lessons to the rest of the Grist staff. My question concerns the environmental consequences of the decision to reproduce or not to reproduce. Your answer to Genevieve pointed out that the two biggest actions we can take to support a healthy environment relate […]

Jonna Higgins-Freese reviews Having Faith by Sandra Steingraber

I am an environmental activist, and for almost a year, my husband and I have struggled to understand how our environmental commitments bear on our decision about whether to have children. So when I picked up Sandra Steingraber's new book Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood,, I was immediately drawn in by the opening sentence: "Every woman who becomes pregnant brings to the experience her various identities."