Polluting Our Unborn Babies One Beauty Product At a Time

Lately I have been talking a lot about how important it is to really make an effort and reduce your exposure to chemicals when pregnant. Think about it; in the +/-40 weeks that a baby is inside of you it goes from 2 cells to a full human baby..... it is complex and amazing to see how quickly a fetus develops: FROM TWO CELLS TO A HUMAN BABY! However, the reality is that exposure to any one toxic chemical during this time of rapid and essential development can have a big impact on your baby- so what can happen to a baby when it is exposed to over 200 chemicals (286 chemicals is the average number of chemicals found in newborn cord blood) ?

Sometimes the results of exposure are seen immediately at birth or during early childhood (ie: increases in undescended testicles, increases in autism and behavioral disorders etc), and sometimes the impacts aren't seen until decades later (breast cancer, among other diseases).

How is is that babies are being born, essentially, polluted? Unfortunately, and to the horror of most mothers, it's really the mom's fault. Every product that a pregnant woman uses on her body, everything that a pregnant woman eats, every breathe that a pregnant woman takes exposes her baby to both good and bad things.

To better understand what this means, Healthy Child Healthy World developed an infographic that shows how many mother-to-be's are exposing their unborn babies to dangerous chemicals through their beauty routines, and how easy it is to make small changes in our routines to protect our babies... like we always say at Non-Toxic Munchkin: the key is to make small easy changes that will slowly become part of our life! (if you have trouble reading the fine print click on this Healthy Child Healthy World link).