When Min Sook Lee was raising her daughter she became alarmed at the number of toys being recalled because they were found to contain poisons; she decided to make a film about childhood exposure to chemicals. The result is My Toxic Baby.
Bisphenol A Triggers Alarms
Ms. Lee says she was most worried by the chemical Bisphenol A, which was causing alarm while she was making her film.
In an interview with The Globe and Mail’s Adriana Barton (September 6, 2009) she said the chemical “was invented in the fifties as a hormone replacement therapy of some sort, which didn’t work out, and then somehow [scientists] found it was useful in the manufacture of plastics. No one thought it would leach out from plastic baby bottles or the lining of tin cans into our food and liquids.”
Health Concerns over Bisphenol A
Of course, Bispenol A did leach out and by ingesting it children were being exposed to some potentially devastating side effects. As CBC News reported on April 15, 2008, “Recent independent studies link the chemical to breast cancer, obesity, infertility, and insulin-resistance in rodents.”
The Canadian government was sufficiently concerned that it announced (October 17, 2008) that “it will immediately proceed with drafting regulations to prohibit the importation, sale, and advertising of polycarbonate baby bottles that contain Bisphenol A (BPA). The Government will also take action to limit the amount of Bisphenol A that is being released into the environment.”
Worries about Toys and Baby Products
Ms. Lee told The Toronto Star’s Rita Zekas (September 5, 2009) that, “Friends had given me baby lotion, shampoo, plastic liners for bottles – but my gut instinct kicked in. She doesn’t need baby lotion. She has pure skin; she doesn’t need fragrance.”
She started buying organic food, although points out that as with most people it’s too expensive to go completely green. She insists on organic meat and dairy products. The toys she buys are made from natural fibres “and (with) racial representation. I grew up with Barbie, self-hating because I didn’t think I was beautiful.”
Environmentally Friendly Child Rearing
In her documentary, Ms. Lee introduces parents to others who have made the decision to raise their children in ways that have as small an impact on the environment as possible. That brings in the concept called Elimination Communication (EC); this is a method of toilet training infants without using diapers.
As diaperfreebaby.com points out, the average North American baby will use 6,000 diapers before being fully toilet trained and those disposable diapers will take about 400 hundreds to completely decompose in landfills.
The Baby Rearing Industry
In her film, Ms. Lee refers to the “baby industrial complex.” She says it’s an “offshoot of capitalism and parenting fears sort of twinned together right so you’ll buy, buy, buy your way out of your insecurity or guilt...”
Many products made especially for babies are unnecessary and their everyday equivalents will do just as well and usually at lower cost.
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