Sandra Steingraber

This book inhabits a niche that is neglected by both scientists and by the "mommy" writers' crowd: a story about being a pregnant human who is also a biologist, in a world permeated by toxins. I found it to be among the most humane - and human - of all the books I've read about being pregnant (among other things, it respects the dignity of the woman who is pregnant and later a mother, without sliding into EarthWombMother woo-woo or infantilizing her as a weird sort of sexualized child-being). The environmental message it speaks in alternate breaths is disturbing, as it should be.

(Even more disturbing is the way that such messages have been, and continue to be, ignored.)… (más)

Ecologist Sandra Steingraber examines her own pregnancy and motherhood through an ecologist's lens. She identifies how the failure of governments to operate by the Precautionary Principle (a chemical must be shown to be safe before use, instead of being assumed harmless until proven dangerous) has damaged the environment at large and many individuals (fetuses, breastfed children, mothers). She asserts that governments ought to regulate the chemicals companies produce and sell; it should not be the responsibility of pregnant women and new mothers to try to protect themselves from dangerous pesticides and heavy metals present in food, etc.

In addition, Steingraber offers the most thorough, honest, and understandable account of the process of labor and delivery, as well as the most articulate explanation for why the weeks and months following an infant's birth are so difficult (lack of sleep causes a slowdown of daily tasks just as they need to be sped up).

Quotes

What is known about teratogenic chemicals in the environment? Where are they located, and who is exposed? The answers are "pathetically little" and "nobody knows." ...Most chemicals have not been tested for their ability to have teratogenic effects. (88)

...the popular books and magazines do not talk much about...environmental issues....There is some kind of disconnect between what we know scientifically and what is presented to pregnant women seeking knowledge about prenatal life. (105)

"In ignorance, abstain." Why does abstinence in the face of uncertainty apply only to individual behavior? Why doesn't it apply equally to industry or agriculture? ...It's pregnant women who have to live with the consequences of public decisions. (107-108)

Obviously, a public health policy that asks expectant mothers to give up certain foods while allowing industries to continue contaminating them is absurd. (128)

...a failure to acknowledge the unique position of the breast-fed infant within the ecological world [at the top of the food chain] prevents us from having an informed public conversation about a very real problem: the biomagnified presence of persistent toxic chemicals in breast milk. (251)

"Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation." (1992 Earth Summit, Brazil)

More quotes in private notes section… (más)