From our living room window on the 26th floor of 1945 Eastchester Road in the Bronx, we can see the water of Eastchester Bay, which is connected to the north to the Long Island sound and to the south, past Rikers Island, to the East River. Orchard Beach is over in Pelham Bay Park, technically on the Long Island Sound, and in the summer is a fascinating study in humanity for a girl used to the placid seashores of New England, but that is another blog, another day. Between us and the Eastchester Bay is this golden mound of earth (green in the summer, but we havn't had enough sunshine yet to turn the world green). This golden mound, about 16 stories high, from a distance actually looks quite pretty against the blue of the sky and grey of the sea behind it but when you get closer you find that its surrounded by a chain-link fence with barbed wire around the top. You can drive within 15 feet of the mound and there is a bike path that winds past it, but you cannot climb on it, around it, to the top to see the view of the sea over the trees, at least not legally. The toxic waste dump closed back in 1978, and was buried under about 4 feet of topsoil and some grass seed, but not before who knows how many thousands of pounds of oil sludge, solvents, cyanide and lead were dumped there. The reason for the barbed wire fence is actually because the mound is still out-gassing. Its scary to see this dump located next to the bay - who knows what is leaching into the ground water or into the bay. Orchard beach is less than 2 miles away, where families swim in the water of the LI sound. If the mound is outgassing, what happens to the air quality in Co-Op City or in my neighborhood every time the winds blow in from the east? I should feel lucky, the Bronx has only 3 toxic waste dumps (we will ignore for now, the toxic waste sites created by closed factories, etc) compared to Brooklyn's 9. If you're in a lucky neighborhood in Brooklyn, it won't matter which way the wind is blowing, you'll always be downwind. And if you live in Greenpoint, then the very ground beneath you is one of the world's largest oil spills.
Now, even before I was pregnant I was "green", albeit perhaps a lighter shade. I recycled as much as possible, talked my husband into replacing our small SUV with a prius, used 7th Generation toilet paper and biodegradable dish soap. But I started thinking more about how the environment affects ME when we were given the keys to our new two-bedroom apartment. When we started moving stuff in, you could still smell the fresh paint and the newly varnished floors. I was told by my doctor not to do any painting myself, which made me think about what I was breathing in during the days following our move. I know that everything outgasses - carpets, paint, compressed wood used to make furniture, our clothing - but what exactly is coming out? I still have no idea.
What has really pushed me over the edge is a book that my friend Kate gave me, called Having Faith which was written by an ecologist (Sandra Steingraber) as a reflection on her pregnancy and the early days after her daughter's birth (I'm only about half way through, at about month 6 of pregnancy). She talks about the myth of the placental barrier, how the placenta really works, and what that means when you're talking about fetal development and toxin exposure. For example, the placenta actually concentrates some toxins on the fetal side, so while the mother's level of methylmercury may be relatively low, the fetus is exposed to higher and higher levels as the placenta transports the methylmurcury as though it were calcium. Lead, dioxin, solvents, synthetic estrogens... all of these can harm the developing fetus, more easily and with greater consequences than adult exposure.
What does this all mean for me and our baby? At this point, I'm not a fish consumer so mercury is not my immediate concern. And I can't panic about the solvents and cyanide from the toxic waste dump we see from our window, or about whatever it is that is leaching from our walls and floors - there is nothing immediate I can do short of wearing a gas mask which might be a tad extreme (or it might not be - just paranoid). Where I am left then, is mad. I am mad that there are so many unseen, unfelt, unmeasured and unregulated poisons that my parents and grandparents and I (yes - even I have contributed to this mess) have released into the environment for my child will have to deal with. The chances of my having a child with Down Syndrome are in the range of 1 in 1250. My chances of having a child with autism are less than 1 in 200. We have a prenatal test for Down Syndrome. As Dr. Steingraber points out, my generation and the future generations, are the ones who will have to deal with raising the "damaged" children. So I guess what I've learned since being pregnant is environmentalism is not about saving endangered species and the rainforest. You won't get enough people to change their habits with saving the rainforest as your goal. Environmentalism is about saving ourselves and our children. Yes, I would love for my child to see the glaciers of Glacer National Park and see the bald eagle fly over the Connecticut river, but more importantly for me, today, is that my child be born with eyes to see these wonders and a brain able to comprehend them.
