Some 25 percent of the world's pesticides and 10 percent of insecticides go to cotton crops every year, leading many environmentalists and public health advocates to wonder if the cotton clothes and bedding children are exposed to could be negatively impacting their health.
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Dear EarthTalk: I know that purchasing organic crib sheets, mattresses and baby clothes is better for the environment—but do they make any difference in terms of the baby’s health?
—B. B., Fairfield, Conn.
It’s true that conventional baby clothing and bedding—conventional referring to that made with cotton grown using synthetic pesticides and fertilizers and bleached and dyed with yet more harsh chemicals—hasn’t seemed to present a problem thus far for generations and generations of babies. But more awareness of chemical sensitivities has many environmentalists and public health advocates wondering if the clothes and bedding children are exposed to could be impacting their health negatively.
Some 25 percent of the world’s pesticides and 10 percent of insecticides go to cotton crops every year. In addition, petroleum scouring agents, softeners, brighteners, heavy metals, flame and soil retardants, ammonia and formaldehyde are used in the processing of cotton once it is harvested. Beyond the environmental impacts of this onslaught in the vicinity of production facilities, there is increasing concern that residues of some of these chemicals might rub off on baby. According to Rachel Birchler of Mooi, a Pittsburgh-based organic children’s clothing boutique, a baby’s skin is more porous and thinner than that of an adult, and as such absorbs stuff more easily. “This means that children are at greater risk for pesticide-related health problems than adults,” she says.
Johnson & Johnson, one of the world’s leading purveyors of baby products, states on its website that “a baby’s skin is thinner, more fragile and less oily than an adult’s” and is “less resistant to bacteria and harmful substances in the environment.” Lotus Organics, which makes organic clothing for both babies and adults, reports that “millions of children in the U.S. receive up to 35 percent of their estimated lifetime dose of some carcinogenic pesticides by age five through food, contaminated drinking water, household use, and pesticide drift.”
So if organic cotton is so much better all around, why aren’t we all swaddling our babies in it and wearing it ourselves? It’s all about cost. Clothing and bedding made from organic cotton is typically more expensive than similar products made with conventional cotton. Consumers watching their spending are often unwilling to pay more for a t-shirt or pants that are just going to get spilled on and beaten up.
But boosters for organic cotton say that paying less for conventional cotton items is penny wise and pound foolish. “Conventionally produced cotton material lasts 10-20 washes before it starts to break down,” reports Mooi’s Birchler. “An organic cotton material lasts for 100 washes or more before it begins to wear down.” How could that be? “Conventionally produced cotton take so much abuse in production because it goes through scouring, bleaching, dying, softeners, formaldehyde spray, and flame and soil retardants before it is even shipped to be cut for patterns,” she explains.
Also, with more and more organic cotton products becoming available every day, from specialty shops to major retailers like Wal-Mart and Target, the price premium for going organic is starting to shrink.
CONTACTS: Mooi, www.mooishop.com; Johnson & Johnson, www.jnj.com; Lotus Organics, www.lotusorganics.com
EarthTalk is produced by E/The Environmental Magazine. GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/, or e-mail: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php
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12 Comments
Add CommentThese EarthTalk articles do not meet the standard one would expect from a science website.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo is there any EVIDENCE that restricting exposure to non-organic cotton has any health benefit at all?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne could argue that if a baby is more susceptible to bacteria then the more sterilized (non-organic) cotton would be better than the dirty organic stuff.
This article seems to be pure speculation that flies in the face of generations of kids growing up with non-organic cotton with seemingly no detriment to their health.
This article is a disturbingly poorly written and researched opinion article. Scientific American, please do a better job reviewing the articles which your authors submit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article has little, if any, foundation in science. The only credible evidence they give references Johnson&Johnson's website. As a for-profit entity, they seek to gain the most from the statement that baby's skin is thinner, less oily, etc.
Moreover, there are better predictors of child allergy and hypersensitivity than organic foods, products, etc. I am referring to breast feeding versus formula feeding, lack of immunizations, and sterile environments.
Infants and toddlers are minimally, if exposed at all, to pesticides through cotton grown with the aid of pesticides. An article written by Nagar et al. at NIST demonstrated that common pesticides could be extracted and detected in raw cotton only after vigorous homogenization of the fibers followed by extraction with methanol, acetone, hexanes, and dichloromethane. The question, therefore, is what level. The answer is ~3 parts per million (3 milligrams in 1 kilogram) in the raw cotton. Additionally, the time of elution ranged from 9 minutes (in solvent) to 65 minutes. This is NOT an appreciable level of pesticides that could at once 1) leach from the processed cotton 2) undergo transdermal absorption, even across the "thinner, less oily" skin of an infant. Additionally, any student of toxicology will remember that all though children may have different responses to chemical exposures, their skin behaves the same way as an adults.
The cost of production of cotton is extremely high and in the absence of pesticides, would be prohibitively expensive for the average new parent, in the US.
Shame on the author for purporting the toxicity of non-organic cotton fibers without substantiating their claim with references in credible scientific journals. Shame on Scientific American for allowing publication of this article.
"According to Rachel Birchler of Mooi, a Pittsburgh-based organic children’s clothing boutique, a baby’s skin is more porous and thinner than that of an adult, and as such absorbs stuff more easily"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven if you discount the built-in bias that an "organic children's clothing boutique" owner would have, one has to wonder what exactly qualifies her medical analysis? Did she major in business and minor in medicine? Come on. Why print such garbage.
You again quote her in the last paragraph, where she makes up some self-serving nonsense about how her organic products last 10 times longer that conventional products. Even if she believes this fantasy, you don't have to print it.
This is the worst I've seen yet in this column. This is not science; This type of writing would be better in Discover Magazine, or Reader's Digest.
@lamorpa
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is hardly the worst.
Read some of the other EarthTalk articles for a good laugh. The one on raw foods recently would be a wonderful illustration if you were teaching a high school class about fallacies and how NOT to write persuasively.
For example, "He was feeling bad, so he ate a special diet. He felt better afterward, so it must be a good diet." (Of course it has nothing to do with the fact that people who feel bad usually get better anyway.)
Or "After starting this diet, some people feel better right away. That proves the diet works. Other people feel icky because bad stuff is leaving. That also proves the diet works." (Don't ask about silly things like what would prove it doesn't work.)
Now, there is muddled thinking like this all over the Internet. Blame schools for focusing on test prep or parents for not having enough well-reasoned conversations with their kids, the lack of logic is simply a fact of life. What really bothers me about these EarthTalk "articles" is that they are nothing more than thinly-disguised ADVERTISEMENTS.
Is Scientific American online just blindly aggregating random crap from across the Internet, or are they receiving compensation from the companies in question? I hope it's the latter; it might give them the funds to hire an online editorial staff.
I agree that these Earth Talk posts are at the least in the wrong category on the page. When there are sections for "latest stories" and "blogs and opinions", they seem like they would be better classified as opinion than a story. When I read something from the latest stories, I expect to learn information, not just hear someone's opinion without any evidence to back it up.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven though I often agree with what they say, these posts are not appropriate as stories from an organization such as Scientific American.
@billsmith
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI knew better than to even look at the 'raw food' one. That 'Raw Food' cult combines the silliness of something like Reflexology with the 'science' of 'natural' vitimins.
By the way, did anyone check out Mooi? A simple white onesie (with a useless little decorative pillow and bib) is $66! Tell me about the environmental load that someone who can afford that kind of buying would create!!
I agree with previous comments: What on earth are these columns doing in the News section? Or on the Scientific American website at all?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe same questions answered with with some actual science could make for an interesting read.
Editors of SciAm.com, please ditch and replace this stuff!
I agree with above comments--where is the science or evidence? When a person asks a question of SciAm, they are expecting to get an informed opinion with science and evidence. It's the science behind SciAm that we are looking for.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf organically grown cotton lasts 10 times longer,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswhat happened to the first nylon socks that came out around WW2 which didn't tear?
Thanks for the post! I really think that <a href="http://www.qualityorganicbedding.com">organic bedding</a> has a huge impact on children's health. My son was having weird skin irritation, and we switched to organic. Now he's just fine!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat link didn't work: http://www.qualityorganicbedding.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this