Fears lead parents to eco-proof their nurseries

When Pamela Davis was pregnant with her daughter Meaghan, she started to worry about contamination from the lead paint in her Hoboken, N.J., row house. Then she started reading about chemicals in plastic toys and baby clothes treated with flame-retardant.

Soon her entire nursery seemed to pose some mysterious threat to her impending bundle of joy. She was surrounded.

"Once you're aware of one thing it just spreads and you start questioning everything," she said. "You can drive yourself absolutely crazy trying to keep your baby healthy."

Davis' predicament is familiar to many expecting parents. Alarmed by the recent flurry of recalls of toys tainted with lead paint or unsafe plastic, families are trying to make careful choices about the toys and surfaces that surround their babies, the air they breathe and the food they eat.

A green baby industry has sprung up in the last decade to cater to like-minded parents looking for products that are safe for kids and gentle on the Earth. It's a concern common enough that eco-babyproofing services have spread across the country, typically run by public health professionals who can give a house a thorough once-over to find evironmental threats and offer remedies.

Eco-proofing a nursery, especially to reduce babies' exposure certain kinds of plastics, "absolutely makes a lot of sense," said Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and director of the Children's Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Landrigan advises both pregnant women and new parents to pick baby toys and other products that are free of phthalates and bisphenol A, even though information about the effects of these chemicals is still largely unknown.

Congress recently imposed tough standards for phthalates in products for children 12 and under. Some scientists believe that long-term exposure to BPA is harmful to humans, but the European Union and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration say the chemical is safe.

Still, Landrigan and other experts say that data from experiments on animals suggest that parents take a hard look at the plastic near their babies, from sippy cups to bouncy chairs, while recognizing that danger does not lurk around each corner of the playpen.

"It's important for parents not to feel the products in their homes are dooming their children," said Janie Fields, executive director of the Children's Environmental Health Institute. She recommends that parents discuss environmental risks with their pediatricians.

For Davis, it was important to surround her family with ecologically friendly products and foods that nurture both the planet and her own three children, now 14, 12 and 10.