December 1, 2007 | Food & drink, Health, Pregnancy
A new study by the Johns Hopkins Blomberg School of Public Health links non-stick cookware to low birthweight in babies. Additionally, a 2004 study they conducted found PFOA (a carcinogen released when the non-stick cookware is heated) in the umblilical chords of 99% of the 300 babies they tested. (Scary, no?) This could be one contributing factor to the sky-rocketing cancer rates in young children.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Environmental Working Group (EWG) have suggested that manufacturers remove PFOA from their products by 2015. In the meantime, we should all take steps to avoid PFOA cookware, and pregnant mommies should be extra careful.
If you have cookware that uses PFOA (Teflon, Calphalon, Scanpan, and All Clad), you can avoid some of the dangers by using your cookware at low to moderate heat, and by replacing it every 2 years. The Green Guide has some good suggestions for alternatives in their recent article, Outfitting the Green Kitchen. Another diamond in the rough is Green Pan cookware, as reviewed by Sprig.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
The URI to TrackBack this entry is:
http://broomhuggers.com/2007/12/01/preggo-mommies-beware/trackback/
hotmomma says:
I’d like to read the actual study and see what controls they had in place. For instance did they toss out the birthweights of premature babies? Did the control for early induction or c-section (prior to 40wks)
as for the 300 babies…that’s a relatively low sampling in the scheme of things dontcha think?
I’m all for going green, but lets make sure the science is good so as not to panic the natives.
December 3rd, 2007 at 7:26 ammudlark says:
Thanks for the input hotmomma. I found an article about it USA Today and another (even more useful) article at Environmental Science & Technology. There’s a summary of the study at Environmental Health News. Hope this helps!
December 3rd, 2007 at 8:24 am