During a week-long beach vacation marked more by flash flooding than sunblock, three friends and I sat together nursing our five infants, (Nico, Olivia, Stella, Hazel and Sam,) and sharing endless pints of ice cream and tales of new-mother fears and elations. Our friend Mary talked about a news report she had heard one night about flame-retardants in breast milk, and of course, that sent us all reeling in horror. Nursing a child is one of the most intimate, natural and bonding gifts of motherhood, (while simultaneously painful and difficult at times,) and to think that it was being invaded by something so unnatural as flame-retardants sent us spinning. Given our backgrounds, (we all came from the world of environmental activism,) it didn’t take long before we moved on from shock to action. Though it took a few month to get things rolling, our organization MOMS – Making our milk safe – was really born on that trip.

MOMS’ mission is to protect the health of our babies by eliminating the growing threat of toxic chemicals and industrial pollutants in human breast milk. We believe that breast milk is the best source of nutrition for our babies, and we want to keep it that way.

 
(Mary Brune, Genevieve Raymond, and Shannon Wright – 
co-founders of MOMS)

Organizations like MOMS and MomsRising help connect mothers around the country and keep them informed. Most importantly, they give the power to parents to demand the protection that our children deserve.

Do you feel empowered by the political organizing that is happening in the field of environmental health, or do you feel bombarded by the seemingly endless stream of new information about potential health hazards that pops up on the screen every time you open a news website on your computer?