Public Health and Environment

Children's Environmental Health - Breastfeeding

Both babies and mothers gain many benefits from breastfeeding. Breast milk is easy to digest and contains antibodies that can protect infants from bacterial and viral infections. Research indicates that women who breastfeed may have lower rates of certain breast and ovarian cancers.

-Center for Disease Prevention and Control

It is important for breastfeeding women to take care to avoid exposure to toxins, as they would in pregnancy. A toxic exposure to a breastfeeding mom means a toxic exposure to a breastfeeding baby. Remember, however, that the benefits of breastfeeding far outweigh any risk.

Washington County Resources

• Family Health - Breastfeeding

Other Resources

• Minnesota Department of Health - WIC
  • Breastfeeding - How Does WIC Support Breastfeeding

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • Breastfeeding

• Natural Resources Defense Council
  • Healthy Milk, Healthy Baby-Chemical Pollution in Mother's Milk

Action Steps

• Breastfeed. Your milk is unsubstitutable. Your baby needs it and will thrive on it. Indeed some researchers believe that breast milk can actually help "rescue" the baby from certain kinds of prenatal toxic damage. The healing powers of breast milk are unsurpassed.
• Continue to avoid home and garden pesticides after your pregnancy. These chemicals can easily find their way into your milk through breathing and skin contact.
• Eat healthy by choosing a low-contaminant diet. While most chemical contaminants in breast milk are drawn from fat reserves that have been laid down over the mother's lifetime, you can at least reduce your current daily intake of harmful chemicals.
• Continue to avoid dry-cleaning fumes and other solvents from paints and finishes, glues and other building products.

-Children's Health Environmental Coalition