I loosely monitor safety recalls, but am not as vigilant as most parents I know. The only time a toy recall effected us is when they recalled all Thomas trains that contained red paint for excess lead. My younger son is a big fan, and we have all the trains, tracks, and other “gear”. I had to forcibly take away our two James engines (the red train) from a crying 4 year old. I tried to tell him that James was broken, but he wasn’t buying it. Every time we went to a Target or another store that sells toys for about 6 months, he asked me to buy a James train. Alas, there were no safe ones to be had. Much trauma for our family.

You can sign up on the CPSC website for an email giving all of the product recalls (or just the child-related ones, if you prefer). We do this, and it’s not overwhelming to skim them and see if something affects us (almost never). But generally speaking, we’re pretty chilled out about all of this stuff. It’s the classic tradeoff between spending your life obsessed with unlikely bad outcomes, and ignoring some stuff so that you have time to build a sandbox.

I wouldn’t say I am not concerned. But at times the recalls issue can be annoying.

I live in the UK, and so use a store loyalty card in our supermarket. Now with our son, our friends with children and our son’s childminder group of friends I have bought my fair share of (it seems) boy friendly gifts from the supermarket.

A few months ago I got a letter through the mail saying, “according to our records of your loyalty card you have bought some die cast toys from our shop which may contain lead. You can bring them back for a full refund.”

Now really. I have lost count off how may die cast cars I have bought for my son and other children over the past year. Did I sound the alarm to everyone I know? No. It is just too difficult.

BTW, my son and all his friends remain alive.

I registered the car seats and the crib as regularly used and critical items. I couldn’t tell if I had a Titan E or EX or whatever, so it was easier to let the manufacturer tell me if my batch went bad. Everything else was easy - we just didn’t buy it or accept it as gifts because I didn’t want a ton of noisy plastic stuff in my house.
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I was criticized by a teacher for allowing a hat that tied on to the head (a sun hat) because if another child grabbed it from behind, the ties could strangle my child. I saw that as a supervisory issue rather than a problem with the hat. How else are you supposed to keep a sun hat on?

The BPA thing-can it really be as bad as breathing in polluted air? Between car exhaust, manufacturing exhaust, and everything else we burn/blow into the air around us, how much does the BPA really affect our bodies? A little caution is always good, but we could spend hours a day driving ourselves batty trying to buy the right products-all while life passes us by…

I am not a worrier about toys or equipment. I rarely register anything and we buy most things second-hand.
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About the lead paint….are kids eating these toys? I am quite certain that my children’s exposure is far below that of prior generations. My parents used to melt and re-cast lead in our garage to make parts for house-hold repairs. We also made our own fishing lures and sinkers.

I’m careful and do a little research before I buy anything..there is a lot of opinions out there and so many things for a baby. We just try to use good judgement without it obsessing.

I’m one of the many organic-food freaks, and make sure that as much as possible of what my toddler daughter eats is organic. It’s a bit of a leap of faith given that the jury’s out on whether organic really does offer benefits over regular food, but it certainly makes me feel better! I think the key is not to obsess about a single issue, though - in my focus on food, I could perhaps miss a much bigger danger if I’m not careful.

I don’t deliberately expose my kids to harm, but I know there are some hard-core parents out there who would argue that I am not a fit parent with how laid-back I am about this stuff. I glanced over the panic over the BPA in bottles, as well as the formaledhyde in the carseats, the suffocation hazards of poorly ventilated cribs . . . I find it’s usually a bunch of nonsense in my opinion. As someone said before, there is profit to be made in the fear-mongering of what we use with our children. Some amount of basic research (better cars seats and good features for a crib, for example) with a dose of common sense (don’t super-heat your child’s bottle with the milk in it or let them eat non-consumables) should be more than sufficient for 99.9% of the population. A tragic accident or mistake can happen to even the most vigilant parent, so how much are you willing to sacrifice the quality of your life in pursuit of the “perfect” method of raising your children?? I’d rather take that time to actually play with my daughter on our swingset than agonize over my research for the perfect pest-repellant, child-safe swing, and organic sunscreen.

My understanding of the BPA thing is that its been around for 30 years and no problems have arisen — I think its the lawyer driven lawsuits looking to make money making that look bad. In terms of toy recalls, I am with you, 20-Something, you can’t protect them from everything and chances are, its going to be fine.

I realize I can’t keep my child safe from every single pollutant out there, but I do what I can to limit her exposure. If I can do something as simple as use glass bottles instead of plastic ones containing BPA and/or phthalates, why not do it? The fact is, researchers aren’t certain what affect these chemicals (phthalates and BPA) have on infants, and I’m not willing to run an experiment on my child.

I would go crazy if I tried to keep up with all the research and worrying if the sippy cups contained BPA. I registered car seats, baby swings and such. We bought the crib used but researched first if there were any recalls. I stay aware and informed. I suppose if I could I would wrap my son in bubble wrap to protect him.

We used BPA-laden bottles with our first and had bought new nipples to reuse the bottles for our second. We ended up using other bottles because my chemist dad came over and freaked out about us using these bottles. He went through my house and pitched everything that didn’t meet his standards. I think for him it was a little of “too much knowledge is a bad thing.”
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As for everything else, we don’t skimp on car seats. Even though our 3-year-old infant bucket was totally serviceable, my husband insisted we get a new one for our the current baby - we had loaned out our bucket to a few people in the intervening years, and he wanted something as close to “guaranteed” as possible for this kid. We turned our water heater to 120. We child-locked the poison cupboard. But our older child has been remarkably accepting of rules we’ve laid down, so we don’t have a ton of childproofing around the house and we’re not planning it for our second. I think a lot of safety stuff sold just lets parents be less vigilant and can still lead to problems, so I’d rather not use it (like that alarm for the car seat).

I try not to panic about everything, but it is hard to stay up-to-date with all the research! I try to feed my kids organic food (e.g. strawberries) if that food contains a lot of pesticides, I diligently research cribs, car seats, etc. But I have apparently already damaged my children with the BPA bottles that I used before this research ever came out. My children have mouthed some PVC toys over the years. It can really drive one crazy if you spend all of your time following what is “safe” and what is not.
Interestingly, I just recently became aware of a cosmetics website that tracks harmful chemicals in cosmetics and other products. I thought that it would be a great idea to rid our home of harmful chemicals, especially for the kids. However, once I actually started reseraching the products that I already use, I found out that absolutely NOTHING is safe!! There is pretty much only a small handful of products that you can actually use (and of course, some products you cannot use at all, like nail polish or hair dye) that the website rated as “safe.” I just gave up.

It’s not just toys and foods for kids — it drives me nuts trying to figure out what to eat when the guidelines for what’s safe changes every five minutes. You should eat plenty of fish, especially salmon, for the Omega-3’s, but farmed salmon has awful stuff and other fish are overfished and the oceans are endangered, and wild salmon is ridiculously expensive. Don’t buy water because bottled water is bad for the environment, so I started refilling my water bottles, only to read that the plastic degenerates and you shouldn’t reuse the bottles, and the water carriers have some bad plastic stuff in them too..?? What the **&^%!!!!! We live in a crazy, crazy, world, more concerned than ever with health and yet….

I’m with Brit in that I feed my child only organic meats, dairy and fruits/veggies. I feel strongly that it is superior to all of the chemically injected crap. 30 yrs ago we didn’t have to worry about this as food standards weren’t as low as today suppliers try to cut costs in the name of quality. As for recalls, I am vigilant but not overly obsessed. I think there is a lot of unecessary panic and fear that goes on in our culture.

The BPA thing has been taken a lot further in Canada - it’s being banned in baby bottles and they have all been pulled off the shelves. It makes it easier for parents because it forces manufacturers to step and and produce BPA-free products.

While I don’t like to be overly alarmist, I did do a lot of research during my pregnancy about which plastics are “good” and which are “bad”, and I then followed up by viewing the toy manufacturers’ Web sites or calling 800 numbers to determine which plastics they used. I was able to ascertain that there are some baby product manufacturers who are committed to the safer plastics, and some that are not. It was our practice to only purchase toys, feeding products, etc. from those manufacturers, which made it easier than checking every single toy. It did take time, but I thought it was worth it.

I do recognize that we’re bound to learn sooner or later that even the “good” plastics aren’t, but right now, all I can do is work with what I know.

People make the argument that no one ever monitored plastic use, lead or toxins when “we” were growing up, and we’re fine. However, we’re the generation who is now giving birth to the generation of children in which 1 in 120 are on the autism spectrum, with no real explanation. Also, we just don’t know how these chemicals are going to affect our children decades down the line… so, Imay as well be careful (without being insane) if I can!

I’m not a parent but I can say without hesitation that I’d do everything in my power to limit exposure to these chemicals and I’ll definitely be feeding my child organically grown and raised food as much as possible.

I don’t worry very much. Recalls or no recalls, the toys my kids are playing with are 10x safer than the toys I played with (lawn darts, real bows and arrows, ect) and about 100x safer than what my dad played with, yet we lived to tell about it.

Yoshi,
Regarding organic foods (this is off topic) but I find it amazing that all the environmentalists and health nuts embrace organic foods so much. Food grown with modern techniques (fertilizers, pesticides, geneticly altered species) yield several times as much per acre than foods grown organically. If the entire world switched to organic, we would have to expand our croplands by millions of acres, causing widespread global deforestation, water shortages and famine. Is all that worth preventing a little river run-off polution and extremely rare (if existant) medical complications? Most people eat non-organic with absolutely no ill-effects.

We just don’t know,
The increase in autism spectrum diagnoses does not mean there has been an increase in children with the disorder. 20 years ago, only those who would be classified as severely autistic today were diagnosed. Those with milder forms like asbergers etc were just assumed to be “a little odd,” “antisocial,” or “shy.”

SD Dad- the whole world will never switch to all organic as it is not affordable. Eating organically is not the cause nor will it ever be of global hunger or environmetnal problems. In fact, eating organically keeps many smaller farmers in business.

When I lived in Europe I did not need to be as neurotic about all organic because meat and dairy standards were higher. Also corn syrup was banned and you pretty much find high fructose corn syrup in every product (including whole grain bread!) at regular supermarkets.

My husband and I are not vigilant about any of those things. I love my daughter very much, but there are so many children in the world with legitimate problems (AIDS, starvation, massive political upheaval, daily violence, etc.) that it seems silly to dwell on what are, relatively speaking, slight risks. We’re good to her and try to do our best by the rest of the children in the world by being charitable and avoiding purchasing goods made by companies which exploit children (a moving target, I know, but I do my best).

SD Dad, have you read The Omnivore’s Dilemma? Or Fast Food Nation? I recommend them highly. Good info on what fertilizer does to the environment, and a frightening look at the economics of corn in this country (which, because of farm subsidies, is in EVERYTHING). I wasn’t a believer in organics until I read these.

Former City Mom,
Then we agree that organic food is a luxury for those who are relatively wealthy on the world scale. However, the fact that you choose to eat organically causes a few hundred square feet of land to be put under the plow that otherwise wouldn’t be (or would be used to grow more affordable food, lowering prices for the masses) if you ate non organic. Each person has an effect. It also raises marginal demand for cropland, raising food prices for everyone, just as we have seen from more acres being dedicated to growing crops for ethenol use. Your defense of organic food is like saying, “Of course the whole world can’t drive Hummers, it isn’t affordable. Me alone driving my Hummer is not going to cause global warming. In fact, driving Hummers helps to keep some Detroit auto workers employed.”

I have to admit that I no longer try to keep up on all the latest research re: BPA, PVC, organic foods vs. non-organic, toy recalls, etc. etc. etc. - far too overwhelming and time consuming with hard to quantify benefits and seemingly small risks. I do tend to buy organic food for my boys, used a mixture of glass, BPA free and ordinary bottles, and carefully watched what I ate during my pregnancy (gestational diabetes helped that alot!), but I’ve decided for my (and my husband’s) own mental health not to stress too much about this stuff. With daily news reports seemingly intended to scare the heck out of everyone based on little real evidence (CNN medical alerts are the WORST!), it’s too easy to get caught up by fear. Not a way I want to live.

If the government subsidized organic farming rather than corn, ogranics would be less expensive than foods with unhealthy ingredients. I’d rather have more land devoted to healthy farming than less land devoted to farming that eventually posions the whole world’s land water supply.

That should be “…land AND water supply”.

I probably know much less then I should on this topic, but I would think going as organic as possible would be good for babies and the whole family. I try to pick and choose based on price and how much I think something might suffer from pesticides (I’ve heard coffee and nuts are the worst). Also, I would think just cutting back on packaged crap would be better for whole family. On toys and gizmos: the less you have, the less you have to worry about (and spend $ on, and pick up off the floor!).

I tend to keep up with the standards that affect my life. I do have a #5 plastic nalgene bottle that probably contains BPA. I probably played with toys that had little metal parts (transformers were the worst), lead paint and anything else that was horrible for you. I drink soda (though avoid artificial sweeteners). I tried taking high fructose corn syrup out of my life with no success. My point is, that today something will be the death of you and tomorrow it will be ok in small quantities. To drive this point home in the late 70’s George Carlin had a newsreel bit he did. One news byte stated that saliva was found to cause stomach cancer, only though when swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time. Something will kill me eventually.
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Practicality aside, I tend to either grow my own veggies, buy organic or from local farm stands. This is my choice. I do everything I can to have a sustainable existence. I do it now, so that when I have children, they will grow up doing these things.
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Safety regulations are a great thing and actually help me believe that our government really cares. However, what is safe today may be unsafe tomorrow may be fine the next day. I take everything I read with a grain of salt until confirmed by 3 separate sources. When the recalls start coming, then I start taking notice.

Providence - lets look at smoking 2 packs a day every day from the time you’re 16yo. How long (consuming massive amounts of powerful carcinogens daily) does it take before you develop cancer? 40-50 years?

Now, compare the amount of carcinogen in a pack of cigarettes, to the amount of pesticide residue in a washed piece of fruit. How much difference could it conceivably make?

Ha, good point, like I said, I don’t claim to be educated about this stuff. That is why I am selective about what I buy organic - most of it stuff that is not much more expensive. Maybe I’m paying a little bit for piece of mind only.

I tend to be much more cautious and diligent about my food/drink choices than about other products such as toys/playpens/etc. I appreciate the sentiment expressed by Grad Student at 1:53 … sustainable existence. Yes - I try to buy locally grown produce and locally farmed meats. I buy fair trade coffee (or am I being delusional?) I bring my own cloth bags to the grocery, hardware store, pharmacy, book store. Little tiny things that may not amount to a very tall hill of beans, but I am convinced they amount to something. I breastfed “straight from the tap” for the first six months of my kids’ lives so their exposure to bottles was minimal (yes, I did have to pump so they did drink a couple of bottles a day when I worked)… I’ll admit to being very disheartened when I read a report that mother’s milk contains a huge number of horrible chemicals due to our own exposure over the years. We always use carseats until the children reach the appointed height/weight, but they are not “top of the line.” I threw the “don’t sleep with your child” advice straight out the window and let each baby sleep next to me in the early months. Toys? For the most part our toys are ten years old (our oldest child is ten) so the subsequent children just play with his old stuff. I think the Thomas trains that got recalled were produced five or six years ago so ours are probably safe. But honestly my kids have not appeared to ingest much toy matter so I don’t think too much about it. I think if I subscribed to a watch list or a recall notice service I might go batty and/or become quickly overwhelmed with information overload.

SD Dad- the major difference is my eating organic has a long term health benefit whereas my driving a hummer is purely ostentatious plus is contributing to pollution. The logic that eating organically is contributing to long term environmental degradation I find strange. The tiny plot of land that Farmer Bill uses to grow organic food would hardly reduce prices for the masses. Plus the land Corporation XYZ farms on will be probably be of no use to anyone in another 30-50 years because the soil will be dead from so many toxins. This is only the fruit/veggie/grain side of the debate. How does organic meat and dairy diminish world food supply and contribute to environmental pollution?

My child’s blood just tested borderline-high for lead. Looking online I was promptly freaked out by what I read about even slightly elevated lead levels. Does anyone have any advice to someone living in a 100 year old house on how to decrease potential lead exposure?

SD Dad, you should not dismiss the economic benefits of organic farming vs. large scale, fertilizer intensive farming so quickly.

First, organic farming preserves soil, reduces erosion, and drastically reduces water pollution. Mainstream agricultural practices degrade soil to the point that it becomes little more than a structural matrix to hold the fertilizer. As the soil becomes depleted you need more and more fertilizer in order to maintain production. Chemical fertilizers are expensive; they require hydrocarbons; they must be manufactured using costly capital and labor, and they must be transported over great distances. Add up these costs, and that increased crop yield suddenly looks a lot more resource intensive than it seemed.

After the Green Revolution, third world countries adopted chemical fertilizer intensive farming. It was a Godsend in that it produced a huge increase in food, but now that chemical prices are skyrocketing and petroleum is become more expensive to extract, this method of farming is becoming too expensive for many poor farmers. Unfortunately, these farmers are stuck, as their soil is now so bad it won’t produce without tons of expensive fertilizer.

In addition, mainstream agricultural practices are very expensive in terms of their effects on the water supply. Not only does the soil degradation caused by these practices contribute to stream choking erosion, but also the fertilizers, with their high concentrations of nitrates, pollute local rivers, lakes, and streams and even the ocean. Among other things, heavy use of fertilizer - including organic fertilizers - causes algae blooms. This kills fish, and fish are also an important part of the food supply. As I have said, even organic fertilizers pollute water, but organic farming practices mean you use a fraction of the quantity of fertilizer needed for mainstream farming.

Mainstream agricultural practices also require huge amounts of water, far more than organic farming does. Already, water shortages are a terrible problem in first world nations such as Australia and in many, if not most, third world nations. The Green Revolution is coming to a halt in places like Egypt and Northern India because there is not enough water to sustain it. One problem for the small farmer is that building and maintaining irrigation systems is capital intensive, and capital is in short supply among the poor.

I have avoided the topic of pesticides because there is so much nonsense written about their effects on human health, but there is one area of human health where their effects are well documented: the health of farm workers. Even here in the States, we have injuries and a small number of deaths due to misuse of pesticides by field workers, but in places like India and China, many farm workers are injured and sometimes killed by pesticides. When one tallies up the costs of mainstream agriculture, one should not overlook this.

Organic farming is not a backward, anachronistic, practice. It is quite sophisticated, and relies on research and experiment more than it does on sentiment. The aging hippie who settles down on his organic farm to grow cabbages learns the science fast or goes out of business. Organic farming does require more labor than mainstream farming; you need more people per acre to produce the same amount of food because you need to weed, compost, deal with pests, and improve the soil rather than relying on pesticides and heavy applications of fertilizer to do the job. However, when you look at the true cost of mainstream agricultural practices in terms of soil degradation, water use, water pollution, and fertilizer production and transport, you can make a solid, dollars and cents argument that it is less affordable over the long term than organic farming.

You live in SD, the poster state for commodity grain production. I live next to the Dungeness Valley, the center of seed production for almost 80% of the United States’ cabbage, kale, spinach, and Brussell sprout crops. We are running out of water, and this is the Pacific Northwest! Runoff here kills salmon, a vital part of our economy. Transportation costs for fertilizer, fuel, and feed kill us because we are so remote. We know the costs of agribusiness, and we know we can’t afford them.

In a home that old your best bet is to get a company in that specializes in lead paint removal (and yes, there is a special way). It’s expensive, but depending on where you live and when you bought your house, there may be some assistance. It should have been on your disclosure when you purchased the house. Talk with a lawyer as well. You want to have all your bases covered.

Thank you, kaleberg. I couldn’t have said it better myself!

Lead can be removed from the home or encapsulated. In old houses, it is frequently in the layers of paint as well as some pipes (lead pipes are uncommon for potable water but it happened). You can test for lead in various areas using home test kits. This will help you focus your efforts. Abatement is generally done by a contractor who is certified to handle hazardous material. Encapsulation (aka paint over it with special stuff) is also a good option, depending on your home. Both processes can generate hazardous dust, the goal is to contain the hazard and help to prevent continued exposure. Good information on abatement and encapsulation can be obtained from state agencies. I happen to like NY’s information:
http://www.health.state.ny.us/environmental/lead/leadbroc.htm
http://www.health.state.ny.us/environmental/lead/lead_encapsulants.htm
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Talk to your pediatrician about whether it is appropriate for your child to take a multivitamin to help reduce lead absorption (calcium and iron deficiency can both increase lead uptake from the environment).

Lead can be removed from the home or encapsulated. In old houses, it is frequently in the layers of paint as well as some pipes (lead and brass pipes are uncommon for potable water but it happens). You can test for lead in various areas using home test kits. This will help you focus your efforts. Abatement is generally done by a contractor who is certified to handle hazardous material. Encapsulation (aka paint over it with special stuff) is also a good option, depending on your home. Both processes can generate hazardous dust, the goal is to contain the hazard and help to prevent continued exposure. Good information on abatement and encapsulation can be obtained from state agencies. I happen to like NY’s information:
http://www.health.state.ny.us/environmental/lead/leadbroc.htm
http://www.health.state.ny.us/environmental/lead/lead_encapsulants.htm
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Talk to your pediatrician about whether it is appropriate for your child to take a multivitamin to help reduce lead absorption (calcium and iron deficiency can both increase lead uptake from the environment).

Yes, thank you Kaleberg, for taking the time to fully illustrate the argument for organic farming. I personally, try to support local organic farmers first, then local farmers, then organic farmers, and try to avoid far-away non-organic crops.

Sounds like we are on the same page with this topic, we can trade tips! I think there was details in another topic, but I’m having trouble keeping track, Coffee Exchange works for me, any AM.

I could do a fairly early morning or any evening really. Weekends are possible too, depending on work.

kaleberg - “Mainstream agricultural practices also require huge amounts of water” Wouldn’t a Central Valley “organic” tomato farm require just as much water as a “mainstream” tomato farm, if we take “organic” to mean any product produced in accordance with the Organic Foods Production Act?

As I understand it “‘Organic’ is a labeling term that denotes products produced under the authority of the The Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA), enacted under Title 21 of the 1990 Farm Bill.”

http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELDEV3004445&acct=nopgeninfo

I think you’re giving “organic” more credit that it is due.

A son, perhaps the water requirements are roughly proportional to the yield per acre, which would be lower for the organic farm. I’m just guessing here since my agricultural experience is limited to backyard gardening.

I actually evaluate chemical risks for a living in an occupational setting but there is even more conflicting information out there when it comes to regular consumers and kid’s exposures and I find it hard to make these decisions especially mixed up with my personal feelings which don’t tend to come up at work. That said, once we had to start feeding our kid real food, I did become much more aware of nutrition issues and started feeding my kid as much organic food as possible then and now we mostly just try to eat a wide variety of fruits, veggies, beans and meats to try and get a good diet. After hearing more about water bottles, we did swich the kid from many time used over “disposable” water bottles (here I thought we were saving the environment by reusing) to rotating the bottles through every week to a stainless steel bottle.

I buy organic for some foods-when my son was a infant I tried to give him all organic food. Now that he’s 2.5 its more mixed and I do not stress about it-=though I try to avoid packaged food as much as possible. Same thing with stuff-I never stress about recalls and the latest hazard lurking in your home/office/car-its easy to do if you never watch local news. There’s a huge business built on fearmongering-parents just need to realize that there is no way to keep kids 100% safe. Even if there was it would not be good for their development. Its like these new theories that link the spread of childhood asthma to the sterile clean environments infants are being raised in.

Honolulu - I’d say no as “organic” means you can’t use genetically modified drought resistant seeds.

One of the benifits of GM foods are that a farmer can get the same yield with less water and less pesticide. Therefore, I would argue that “organic” and what is good for the environment are not synonymous.

A son, are the GM drought resistant seeds in much use for large scale commercial farming? I myself have no problem with GM seeds and see GM as a boon rather than a bogeyman, but the GM issue has been a very controversial one here b/c of cultural objections to GM kalo aka taro, so the potential for protest certainly makes it an issue for local farmers in deciding whether to use, for instance, a GM bunchy-top resistant strain of banana. Perhaps others are better informed on how widespread the use of GM drought resistant varieties are in the US?

To Lead Advice, I’m not an expert, but have renovated a lot of old houses and will offer some suggestions before you move out of your historic home. Pealing paint, either interior or exterior is the most obvious threat. I dealt with an exterior lead paint remediation on a renovation I did a few years back. It involved having the paint removed from all exterior siding down to bare wood and the waste being properly disposed of (not sure where/how, they just take it away). It added a couple of days of labor to my exterior painting bill plus a disposal fee. The paint was badly peeling, so I needed to do this to get homeowners insurance. Full removal may not be necessary if the paint is only peeling in a few spots. As you’ve probably seen from your web research, lead can also be in the soil, interior paint, pipes, and in dust in your home. You can get lead testing kits at the hardware store for testing both paint and soil. Soil wasn’t an issue for my project, so not sure how it is remediated. If the interior paint is not chipping or peeling, it can be safely sealed with a good primer and a fresh coat of paint. If it is chipping or peeling, it will require scraping and sanding (and proper disposal) to smooth it before re-paint. You may want to have a pro do this job and dispose of the waste properly (and keep the kids away while the painters are working). I understand that keeping the house dusted and vacuumed actually can help decrease risk of lead exposure in old houses (not sure where I read this, so may not be reliable, but the logic is just less dust in the air and on surfaces). Also, I’ve had several home inspectors tell me that lead pipes do not pose the risk that lead paint because the amount of lead carried in water that travels through lead pipes is much lower concentations than what you’d get from ingesting lead paint chips/dust. This is the conventional wisdom, anyway. If the kids had borderline lead levels, they’re exposed to it somewhere. Unless they dig in the yard a lot, it’s probably from paint. Find the chipping paint and you’ve likely found the source. Closets, trim pieces, inside cabinets, attics, and basements get painted less often than room interiors, so are more likely to have exposed or chipping lead paint. Also, if they spend significant time elsewhere - grandma’s house, private care giver, etc. keep in mind that lead paint was used until 1970s, so “newer” homes can also have this contamination as well, and the exposure may be from outside of your home. Hope this helps.

My brother and sil are older first-time parents. Their child has been given nothing but organic, homemade food since he started on solids. Every sunscreen is carefully researched. Cloth diapers. The whole nine yards. It’s very nice that they have the energy for all of this research and extra work, especially when traveling, but unless you plan to lock your child in a bubble, it’s just not sustainable. You might be able to find a holistic, organic preschool that NEVER serves snacks made from ordinary supermarket flour, but real school is another story. And friend’s houses, birthday parties, vacations, grandma’s house, etc. It’s important to pick your battles, and those who are obsessed with food additives and sunscreen ingredients and plastic water bottles won’t have the energy for the big stuff.

When I had one child, I cooked whole grains, rarely allowed her to have sweets, the whole thing. By the time she started kindergarten, I had a second child and then a third. Gone was the time to fix the home-cooked healthy meals, and she got the idea of candy from other kids in school. The first child didn’t watch much TV; guess what happened when there were two more babies and I needed some extra rest in the very early morning or late afternoon. Do I feel bad about this? Not really. It would have been nice.

I admit personal Bias regarding organic farming. My first degree is in Agriculture. I get bored with the “threats” of “corporate” farming. If the claims about depleting or ruining the earth are neutralized, the organic argument becomes much less pursuasive. It really is only an economic/ lifestyle choice
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“What many people worry about is soil organic matter, which has nothing to do with mineral content. Traditional (organic) farming involved regular application of animal manure and this resulted over the years in a build up of organic matter. This improves soil texture, increases micro-organisms (which organic growers believe can improve crop disease resistance) and holds onto moisture better (reduces drought susceptibility). Modern intensive farming tends to use no animal manure. It was thought that this would result in a drastic loss of organic matter. Rothamsted Research Station have experiments that have been running over 100 years looking at various aspects of soil and nutrition (www.rothamsted.bbsrc.ac.uk). Their work shows a reduction in organic matter but nowhere near as great as expected because the much higher yield of intensive systems results in much larger amounts of root left in the soil when crops are harvested and this breaks down to soil organic matter.
4. In any case, modern farmers monitor micronutrient (mineral) levels in the soil and apply metal salts as necessary and also basic slag and sterilised sewage sludge (those near sewage farms). They are in the business of high yields and they would not let mineral deficiencies reduce their cropping.”
source: http://en.allexperts.com/q/Agriculture-2377/Soil-Depletion-Myth-Fact.htm

i get more confused about nutrition for kids….looking into gluten free, and what is good for your child.

It IS a full time job… holy cow. It’s what motivated me to start a website to keep track of it all: http://SafeMama.com.

I was so frustrated after trying to keep up with the toy recalls and then BPA and etc etc.. I was sick of crawling all over the Internet for hours keeping up with it.

It can be truly maddening.

A Son, regarding the organic tomato farm, no, it would not use as much water as a conventional farm. I’ll get to the GM seeds later, but, despite T-wife’s citation - and I give her credit for looking for the facts - organically treated soil holds more moisture than conventionally treated soil. Regular composting, which is one of the foundations of organic farming, both builds up the soil’s moisture retention and slows evaporation. Other organic practices like planting co-crops and relying on succession plantings and “green manure” also slow evaporation. Finally, you don’t spray organic crops with water soluble fertilizers and pesticides on a regular basis.

Although I support organic, or soil focussed agriculture, I also support the careful introduction of GM seeds. In fact, I find the prospect of GM crops and even livestock to be thrilling. There is so much mysticism, sentimentality, and ideology, both of the left and the right, surrounding food. No, organic food, wild salmon, and raw milk, etc… won’t cure disease and lead us all to a bright new day. But scientifically supported, sustainable, thrifty agriculture produces tastier food at a lower long term cost than mindless reliance on monocultures, chemicals, and sloppy soil handling.

To “T-wife to 1, mom to 4″, I want to scream “thank you”. In the early 70’s, 88% of children had elevated lead levels. Now, it’s 1%. Why? No more lead in gasoline. What started out as an environmental issue was the one largest thing we could do to reduce lead levels in children. And everyone involved pretty much agree that the remaining 1% is caused by lead paint in inadequately maintained homes. So, yes, there are toys and other items with paint that violates the federal limit and yes, they should be recalled if for no other reason than to reinforce that it can’t be sold in the US. But some people are worrying themselves sick (and some “consumer advocates” are happy to feed into it) that this little bit of lead is going to irrepairably harm their child. Your child will be fine whether you return the toy, dispose of it, or let them continue to play with it. BPA and phthalates are other examples where advocates have gone completely around good science and taken their scare mongering to the public. But that’s for another day…

The CPSC website, as mentioned here, is a terrific idea to sign up for recall notices. You can choose which categories or items interest you and it’s a great way to have the system keep you up-to-date, rather than have to monitor it yourself.

Kaleberg,
It seems I read an article in the journal about a year ago that mentioned doctors are seeing an increase is illnesses and deaths related to the consumption of raw milk that had mostly disappeared since pasteurization. I’ll stick with my “unhealthy” factory farm milk and the minute traces of hormones it contains over “healthy” raw milk that can kill you if it wasn’t handled properly between the cow and your front step. Still no one has disputed the vast increase in acreage that organic farming entails to grow the same food. I guess it would be good for the environment to clear-cut all our forests and convert them to farms so we can grow all our food organically to keep nitrates out of rivers. I’m not saying there is nothing to learn from advances in organic farming. Some practices can and will be adopted by mainstream farming. I’m just pointing out that people need to consider things more deeply before they make knee jerk reactions about what is good and bad. It is those types of knee jerk reactions that have led to subsidized corn ethanol at the expense of famine and food riots in africa. Or why environmentalist largely oppose nuclear energy even though it is zero emmissions and the safest type of energy generation available. I haven’t seen the studies, but I would guess water usage/ton produced is comperable between organic and non-organic farming. Better soil leads to less evaporation/acre for organic, but lower yields means organic uses 2-3 times as many acres to produce the same amount of food.

“There are contentions that organic farming is unsustainable. One study from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency found that, area-for-area, organic farms of potatoes, sugar beet and seed grass produce as little as half the output of conventional farming.[56] Findings like these, and the dependence of organic food on manure from low-yield cattle, has prompted criticism from many scientists that organic farming is environmentally unsound and incapable of feeding the world population.[57] Among these critics are Norman Borlaug, father of the “green revolution,” and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who asserts that organic farming practices can at most feed 4 billion people, after expanding cropland dramatically and destroying ecosystems in the process. “

I suggest visiting websites such as factsonplastic.com or bisphenol-a.org. By visiting these sites, you will see that bpa has a 50 year safety track record and the US Food and Drug Administration, the Japanese National Institue of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and the European Union have all recently found that bisphenol A is not a health concern at the very low levels present in some consumer products. There are many good products made with BPA - like bicycle helmets and shatter proof baby bottles - these are the products that help keep our kids safe.

Here is some frightening news. If one had silver fillings replaced because of fear of mercury, guess what. The composites that replace amalgams leach BPA. As do sealants and dentures and nightguards and orthodontic retainers…

Sigh. SD Dad, you have clearly fallen into the ideological trap. The proof is that you dragged nuclear power into a discussion about farming. Now I am going to shock the heck out of you. I support nuclear power! Yes, Kaleberg, the believer in thrifty, low water, high compost, non chemical fertilizer farming, is a fan of nuclear power!

For those of you who actually want to think about an issue on its merits, as opposed to succumbing to knee jerk conservatism or liberalism, the reason I support nuclear power is that I grew up in Virginia, and I know the price of coal. As the folk song says, it’s bone and blood.

And I support GM foods! Can you believe it?

As a parent to two kids under 5 and a staffer at Environmental Working Group, I’ll say two things: 1) studies show real risks that we shouldn’t brush off because we are green fatigued (including me!), and 2) EWG and others are making it easier and easier to navigate the products. We have a ‘For Parents’ page at www.ewg.org/forparents that we’re improving all the time.

For me, the easiest route is a) heading to a store I trust, b) keep the wallet-sized guides, er, in your wallet, c) keep it simple - always ask yourself ‘do we need to use that?’, d) do some upfront research to find some brands you trust and stick to them (helps prevent that in-the-aisle panic).

And finally, and probably most importantly, work for change at the state and federal level. Change for stronger laws so that all those products lined up on the shelves are safe(r) and we don’t have to do all this extra thinking. As others have said, we’ve got 5,000 (or more) other things to think about.

It IS a lot to navigate, but in my mind that’s not reason enough to give up in frustration. Even if we are seriously time challenged and have two hungry toddlers in the grocery cart :-)

If an adolescent male wears a plastic orthodontic retainer during the time when secondary sexual characteristics are taking place, will the BPA released cause sterility?

Darrell, from personal experience: no.

SD Dad, have you ever heard anything about this? It may not be any danger at all, for all I know.

I tend to doubt any new studies about things that have been around and in use forever that supposedly kill us. Other than that, I don’t have any specific knowledge other than the millions of teenage boys, including me, who wore plastic retainers through puberty with no ill affects.

I tend to agree with you, SD Dad. I am not convinced that there is anything at all to fear from BPA - whether it is in a plastic drinking container or one’s dental work. However, there are some who might point to the progressive worldwide decline in male fertility which has occurred since about the time plastics became progressively ubiquitous. Since BPA is an estrogenic, or hormone-mimicking, chemical, it could be an easy target for those who wish to profit from causing irrational fear. In reality, the decline male fertility could be due to any number of environmental factors.

Here is what can be found on the University of Maryland Medical Center Website.
http://www.umm.edu/patiented/articles/what_causes_of_male_infertility_000067_4.htm

“Exposure to toxins, chemicals, or infections may reduce sperm count either by direct effects on testicular function or by altering hormone systems, although the extent of the impact and specific environmental assaults involved are often controversial. Some experts believe it is contributing to a general worldwide decline in male fertility.”

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