With the turn of the seasons and the cold weather, you might be looking to buy your children new pajamas. Or, if you are like me, new pajamas are given the night we decorate the tree.
But if you are concerned about being green and your child’s exposure to toxic chemicals, you might be wondering whether those new pajamas have been treated with flame retardants? And does it matter?
Whether or not it matters is a decision you’ll have to make yourself.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) considers chemically treated pajamas safe. In the 1970s, it banned brominated Tris and removed chlorinated Tris from being used on children’s pajamas after they were found to mutate DNA and identified as probable human carcinogens.
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In recent years there have been studies and news stories about the danger inherent in our bed mattresses. Conventional mattresses contain toxic chemicals which leach out into the air over time (off-gassing).
Mattresses today are required by law to have fire retardant materials in them to allow consumers more time to get out of their homes in the even that there is a mattress fire. While that is the goal, the exposure that consumers may have to fire retardant materials in the mattress may be leading to the same potentially lethal outcome.
Boric acid, a household product often used to kill roaches is now being added to some mattresses to help them pass the government’s flammability test.
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Our babies are born with a chemical body burden.
The Environmental Working Group (“EWG”) found that umbilical cord blood from ten randomly selected babies contained 287 chemicals of the 413 for which tests were performed. Of those 287 chemicals, 180 cause cancer in humans or animals, 218 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests.
This potential chemical body burden in a newborn baby is scary for new parents. It was scary for me. You welcome your child to the world, and already you feel as if you have failed.
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