Rocket Fuel Chemical Found in Baby Formula
April 5th, 2009The unnecessary feeding of formula to infants amounts to yet another corporate social engineering atrocity.
Here is a list of conditions that are more likely to affect formula fed babies. The Wikipedia page for infant formula contains bibliographic information on each of these:
Digestive/gastrointestinal issues
* Appendicitis
* Constipation and Anal fissures
* Diarrhea
* Esophogeal and Gastrid Lesions
* Gastroenteritis
* Gastroesophogeal Reflux
* Necrotizing Enterocolitis
* Salmonellosis
* Ulcerative Colitis
Respiratory issues
* Allergies
* Asthma
* Respiratory Infections
* Respiratory Syncytial Virus
* Wheezing
Autoimmune disorders
* Autoimmune Thyroid Disease
* Celiac Disease
* Crohn’s Disease
* Diabetes Mellitus
* Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis
* Multiple Sclerosis
Other infectious diseases
* Candidiasis
* Ear Infection
* Haemophilus influenzae
* Streptococcus pneumoniae
* Tonsillitis
* Urinary Tract Infections
Cardiovascular issues
* High Blood Pressure
* High Cholesterol
Mental/Psychological issues
* Delayed Speech and Language Development
* Lower IQ
* Schizophrenia
Other issues
* Anemia and Iron Deficiency
* Cancer
* Cryptorchidism
* Eczema
* Inguinal Hernia
* Lower Visual Acuity
* Lower Bone Mass
* Morbidity and Mortality
* Obesity
* Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)
I have no idea how much of this is related to the perchlorate and melamine chemicals that are present in the formula products.
Here’s a report about the latest scam being used on people to convince them that formula is a good alternative to breastfeeding:
Replacing Mother—Imitating Human Breast Milk in the Laboratory, details research questioning the alleged benefits of adding “novel” omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, produced in laboratories and extracted from algae and fungus, into infant formulas. The report presents disturbing research indicating that the new additives placed in infant formula are seriously endangering the health of some formula-fed newborns and toddlers. Aggressive marketing campaigns by some infant formula manufacturers appear to have encouraged new mothers to give up nursing and switch to use of the questionable infant formula products.
…
DHA and ARA in infant formula have been linked to severe diarrhea, vomiting, dehydration, and gastrointestinal pain in some infants. Since these additives are relatively new in infant formula, not all pediatricians are aware of their possible side effects.
The following article is closing in on thirty-years-old, but some corporate atrocities are timeless. From Babies Means Business:
The current corporate drive to replace breastmilk with a profitable artificial product is convincing women perfectly capable of producing wholesome, plentiful breastmilk to become consumers of expensive, imperfect and sometimes lethal infant formula.
The infant formula industry’s attack on the basic human function of breastfeeding has been the rallying point for the largest-ever international campaign to expose and reverse exploitative corporate practices. But the scandal is not a unique case. The formula company executives now trying desperately to crush this growing international movement are no different from their counterparts in many other multinational enterprises. To pave the way for sales, they implant values and aspirations that make their products as desirable to a slum-dwelling Kenyan ama as to a housewife in London or Tokyo. Local cultural traditions and tastes are systematically undermined to create the corporate vision of a united world — one big happy marketplace.
Finally, I haven’t read Mechanical Milk: An Essay on the Social History of Infant Formula, but if you’re lucky (or, depending on how you look at it, unlucky) enough to live near a university, it might be worth checking out:
This article describes how the infant formula, originally designed to save babies’ lives, ended up responsible for perhaps millions of their deaths. It reaches back 300 years into the idea of the body as a machine, the rise of science and industrial capitalism, the emergence of nutrition and pediatrics, the growth of the formula industry and resistance to it. It shows how the formula became an icon of modernity, whose promise was truth and happiness through technology, work and the production of goods, but whose reality was, for most people, exploitation, colonialism and the destruction of ‘vernacular’ ways of life.
Via: AFP:
A chemical used in explosives, fireworks and rocket fuel has been found in powdered baby formula in the United States, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) non-profit group said Friday.
In “little-noticed findings”, researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 15 brands of baby milk contained perchlorate, an oxidizer in solid fuels used in explosives, fireworks, road flares and rocket motors, the EWG said.
“Studies have established that the chemical is a potent thyroid toxin that may interfere with fetal and infant brain development,” it said.
The two most tainted brands had a nearly 90-percent share of the US powdered baby milk market in 2000, EWG cited the CDC researchers as saying.
The CDC scientists submitted a report of their study on perchlorate in baby formula to the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology in October last year and it was published last month.
It was unclear when the study was conducted, and the lead researcher, Dr Joshua Schier, was not immediately available for comment.
“The little-noticed CDC findings … raise new concerns about perchlorate pollution, a legacy of Cold War rocket and missile tests,” the EWG said.
According to the EWG, perchlorate is found in drinking water in more than half the 50 US states and mixing tainted baby formula with the contaminated water “could boost the resulting mixture?s toxin content above the level the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers safe.”
A study conducted in 2006 by the CDC found that exposure to perchlorate at levels “considerably below” the level considered safe by the EPA altered thyroid hormone levels in women, the EWG said, calling for new limits to be set for perchlorate in drinking water.
Under president George W. Bush, the EPA last year determined that regulating perchlorate levels in drinking water would not result in “a meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction.”
Research Credit: cptmarginal
Well, damn. I knew formula feeding was bad but not that bad. I’m a walking poster child for breast-feeding. My mother refused to breast feed any of us. She thought it was ‘disgusting’. Grr. I had so many ear infections as a child they had to put tubes in my ears. I still get tonsillitiis. I have IBS with chronic constipation, massive allergies, and some other problems. I’ve also got some of the other problems.
All of that said, I think there is a place for GOOD formulas -and by that I mean, in disasters or other times when you might need to keep an infant alive and have no one around who can breastfeed.
My child -if I am lucky enough to ever have one -will definitely be breeastfed.
More desirable formulas:
http://www.westonaprice.org/children/recipes.html
Can’t win:
Perchlorate found in breast milk across US