It's Not Easy (or Even Possible) to be a Green Parent in Seattle

It's like a bad advertising slogan: "Imagine yourself in a Mercury." Except this time it's "Imagine the mercury in you." Washington Toxics Coalition has produced a new study of pregnant mothers that illustrates just that. As the PostGlobe reports, Seattle mom Kim Radtke discovered eleven chemicals were coursing through her bloodstream, and "rated worst among nine West Coast women tested for a particular class of chemicals: perfluorinated compounds (PFOS)."

Every woman tested was found to have been exposed to , found in such things as the lining of food cans. Each woman had two to four so-called “Teflon chemicals” (All had detectable levels of , a chemical found in long-lived fish like tuna that is known to harm brain development. And every woman was exposed to at least four (pronounced THAL-ates).

This kind of news is just terrible for the chemicals industry, who have been on the lookout for a young, attractive pregnant woman willing to go on record about how the convenience of BPA outweighs its role as an endocrine disruptor. [Per Harper's magazine, subscription-only viewing] So far, no takers.

The hard news is voiced by Molly Gray, a Seattle midwife and naturopathic physician: "The answer I received from this study is that the fight is too big for just one person."

Seattle blog Sightline is running a series called "Sustainababy," about the real world challenges of mothering and sustainability, from polluted air to baby clothes. Anna Fahey writes that her eyes have been opened, too, by the impossibility of personal choice making a dent in her child's exposure to pollutants and contaminants. In a very real way, energy and air quality policy are where mothers need to focus their outrage, but that's not how anyone talks to moms.

The emphasis--and burden--is always on the mother to educate herself personally, to learn what to avoid, and to build a bubble of clean green living for the baby to enjoy.

But no mother goes out to shop for lead, carbon monoxide, or nitrogen dioxide. That comes for free with the air around her. Holding her breath for nine months is longer than most yogis can manage, and they really practice at it.