A study of 48 healthy children, published in Archives of Disease in Childhood in 2000, found that temperatures were significantly higher in
boys who wore
disposable diapers than in boys wearing
scrotal skin
cloth.
term consequences of disposable diapers on a baby’s health? Many people in health care are concerned about this. “You want to think about what you’re put- ting on the most vulnerable skin—a newborn baby’s skin,” says Dr. Deborah Gordon, a family physician in Ashland, Oregon, who has been practicing for 30 years and specializes in preventive medicine. Gordon believes we should not be using disposable diapers on infants.
“Cloth diapers are absolutely healthier and better for the baby,” she says.16 Kai Abelkis, sustainability coordinator at the Boul-
A study
published in
Archives of
Environmental Health found
that
exposed to
several brands of
diapers plastic
experienced eye, nose,
and throat
bronchial
constriction similar to
that seen in
asthma attacks.
irritation,
as well as
mice
der Community Foothills Hospital in Colorado, which uses only cloth diapers on the 1,500 or so infants born there each year, agrees. “We’d rather put a natural product around a child’s private area than something that has chemicals and petroleum,” Abel- kis says.17
“We believe that cloth diapers are a better
option.” Abelkis also points out that there is a conflict of
interest when American hospitals give new parents free samples of name-brand disposable diapers: “We don’t give away Pampers or any other freebies,” Abel- kis says. “We have a policy against it. When you get something from a hospital, there’s an underlying blessing on that product. We believe that each fam- ily should make their decisions based on a holistic approach toward parenting.” Cloth diapering is also healthier for babies because
it promotes more interaction between a parent and baby. While the super-absorbent polymers (SAPs) in plastic diapers can hold many times their weight, and in these difficult economic times parents will change a baby’s diapers as infrequently as possible to save money, cloth diapers must be changed more frequently. My husband and I change our new baby almost as oſten as she pees—which is oſten. Dur- ing diaper changes I look into her big blue eyes with those impossibly fine eyelashes, kiss her tiny toes, and
60 mothering | May–June 2010
In our store in Montreal we get people who have just come straight from the doctor’s office with wild rashes. Their doctors
have instructed them to buy cotton for their babies.
BETSY THOMAS, FOUNDER AND CO-OWNER OF BUMMIS
gobble up the rolls of fat around her belly. By chang- ing her oſten, the baby and I get lots of good face time; we have long conversations (baby: “Ah-bah!” me: “Ah- bah? Ba-ba!”); I know how well hydrated she is; and I am also teaching her not to get used to soiling herself. Cloth diapers may be even healthier for boys than for girls. A boy’s penis and testes are on the outside of the body in order to keep them at a cooler temperature than 98.6°F. But plastic diapers—especially when
they’re not changed oſten enough—keep the genital area hotter than nature designed it to be. A study of
48 healthy children, published in Archives of Disease in Childhood in 2000, found that scrotal skin tem- peratures were significantly higher in boys who wore disposable diapers than in boys wearing cloth.18
Te
researchers from the Netherlands hypothesized that the overuse of disposable diapers may be one of the reasons for the decline in male reproductive health, and concluded that disposable diapers keep a boy’s body too hot: “Te physiological testicular cooling mechanism is blunted and oſten completely abolished during plastic nappy use,” the authors reported. As if that weren’t enough, plastic diapers have also
been linked to asthma, an illness that affects millions of children.19
A study published in Archives of Envi-
ronmental Health found that mice exposed to several brands of plastic diapers experienced eye, nose, and throat irritation, as well as bronchial constriction similar to that seen in asthma attacks. Chemicals, including toluene, xylene, ethylbenzene, styrene, and isopropyl-benzene, were off-gassing from the diapers, and were thought to be the cause of respiratory dis- tress. Te cloth diapers studied did not cause the mice symptoms of respiratory distress.20 For Amanda Bird (not her real name) of Taylors-
ville, Georgia, a 27-year-old mother of two whose firstborn was in disposables but whose second child was in cloth from seven months on, cloth diapers had another unforeseen health benefit: Tey helped Bird
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