Chemicals and infertility

Posted: Feb 25, 2011 7:45 AM
Updated: Feb 25, 2011 8:33 AM

Molly Jones gray works hard to make sure her toddler, Paxton, has a safe and healthy home. She described her household, "Organic fruit, no pesticides or herbicides. We tried to replace a lot of our cleaning products with what I thought were green companies."

The Seattle mother and her husband Zack first learned of environmental health risks when there was a problem getting pregnant, "Five years ago, we had our struggles with infertility and repeated miscarriages. It's just alarming what the average consumer has to hold in their head, to figure out what's safe, and what's not safe."

While pregnant, she took part in a scientific study that tested for mercury and several widely used chemicals, "My mercury levels were higher than all the women tested," she explained.

Reproductive health experts are now examining the impact of chemicals in everything from cans to cosmetics and cleaning products.

Tracey Woodruff is the director of a program on reproductive health and the environment at University of California San Francisco said, "Pregnant women are exposed to many different types of chemicals. Can those things be increasing their rates of difficulty in getting pregnant, adverse birth outcomes, childhood conditions? We see certain childhood cancers have gone up; there has been an increase in autism, reports of increases in ADHD, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder."

Avoiding potentially harmful chemicals is not easy for consumers. Experts say it will also take government policy changer and safer substitutes from manufacturers, a process just now gaining momentum.