Infant feeding and waste

It is seen as common knowledge that a mother will pass organic chemicals deposited in her body fat stores to her child through breastfeeding. Research by LaKind et al, however, showed that the amount of deposited organic chemicals do not decrease during the lactation period. One can therefore no longer state that  a mother will pass on her own burden of pollution on to her breastfed child. Still, the environmental pollution that we surround ourselves with is dangerous. People in industrialized countries carry those around and the unborn child will be exposed during his most vulnerable period of development. This may lead to unwanted development of ill-functioning organs and possible changes in rain function en , with that, behavioral change later on. Not breastfeeding is a vast contributor to this pollution. A baby who is not breastfed will get a headstart building his carbon footprint. In the USA alone, more than 32 million kW of energy is used every year for processing, packaging, and transporting formula, and 550 million cans, 86 000 tons of metal, and 364 000 kg of paper are added to landfills every year. Infant formula manufacturers earn so much money with their polluting and for most infants unnecessary product that they can spend an average of US$30 every year per baby on product promotion, compared with $0•21 per baby spent by the US Health Department on breastfeeding promotion.
LaKind JS, Berlin CM, Sjödin A, Turner W, Wang RY, Needham LL, Paul IM, Stokes JL, Naiman DQ, Patterson DG: Do Human Milk Concentrations of Persistent Organic Chemicals Really Decline During Lactation? Chemical Concentrations During Lactation and Milk/Serum Partitioning. Environ Health Perspect. 2009 October; 117(10): 1625–1631.
The Endocrin Disruption Exchange: Critical Window of development http://www.endocrinedisruption.com/prenatal.criticalwindows.overview.php http://www.criticalwindows.com/go_display.php
Coutsoudis A, Coovadia HM, King J: The breastmilk brand: promotion of child survival in the face of formula-milk marketing. Lancet 2009; 374:423–25