The Health Risks of Disposables
Ever see those beads of silicone-looking crystals on your baby’s private parts after you change a disposable diaper that had been left on too long and wonder what they were?

Well, that is the stuff that makes those disposables so absorbent! It is a chemical known as Sodium Polyacrylate. It is added in powder form to the inner pad of a disposable diaper. When it becomes wet, it turns into a gel that can absorb up to 100 times its weight in water.

BUT, there are a few under-reported facts about Sodium Polyacrylate you should know:

• The Journal of Pediatrics reported that 54% of one-month old babies using disposables had rashes. 16% of these were severe rashes.


• Sodium Polyacrylate was linked to severe skin irritations including oozing blood from perineum and scrotal tissues, fever, vomiting and staph infections in babies. When injected into rats it caused hemorrhage, cardiovascular failure and death.


• Sodium Polyacrylate has been linked to asthma

• Dioxin, which in various forms has been shown to cause cancer, birth defects, liver damage, and skin diseases, is a by-product of the paper-bleaching process used in manufacturing disposable diapers, and trace quantities may exist in the diapers themselves.


• When feces are discarded with disposible diapers and end up in landfills, there is potential for public exposure to harmful pathogens (for example, babies who have been vaccinated for polio will excrete polio virus). These pathogens can enter groundwater or spread via rodents, pets, flies or birds.

We've found at Angel Bunz that our own children know what is and isn't good for diaper rash. One day, our son had a particularly severe rash. When changing him out of a disposable, he actually threw the cloth diaper at me requesting use the cloth instead of a disposable. We put it on him and the NEXT MORNING his rash was GONE!

Each week, many parents think nothing of buying a pack of disposables, whose cost is often hidden in the grocery bill. But when you add it up over the entire diapering period, the costs are substantial. The figure, of course, depends on:

• The number of diaper changes a day (as pointed out below, babies in disposables are often changed less frequently--at the expense of the baby's health)


• The age at toilet training.

By contrast, diaper services charge anywhere from $10.00 to $15.00 a week, depending on the part of the country you're in. This works out to $1,300 to $2,000 over two and a half years for a diaper service for one child, for clean diapers delivered to your door each week, the use of wraps in whatever size you need at the time, and a diaper pail. If there is more than one child in diapers, there are savings for the second child.

Home diapering, on the other hand, can be done for as little as $400, or as much as $1,200, depending on the type of products selected.

Well-made products should last for subsequent children. Diapers can range anywhere from $20.00 a dozen for diaper service-quality prefolds, up to $60.00 or even $100 a dozen for fitted, contoured diapers with snaps or organic cotton diapers. You'll need somewhere between three and five dozen. Covers range from $4.00 to $18.00 apiece, depending on the quality and material, and you'll need up to 25 (about five in each size range). Figuring in detergents and energy costs of about $.60 per load, the average parent will spend well under $1,000--usually more like $500--for home diapering.

An Added Benefit: Earlier Potty-Training
Another advantage to cloth diapers is that they usually lead to earlier toilet training because the child actually knows when he or she is wet. Now that many children go straight from disposable diapers to disposable pull-ups, it's not uncommon to see four and five year olds who still aren't completely potty-trained wearing pull-ups to school. This has an obvious impact on the child's self-esteem, not to mention an added impact on landfills. (Mothering Magazine May/June1998)

Conclusion
Initial investment is highest for home laundered cloth; however, long term savings are substantial.

Better for your Planet

• Disposable diapers are the largest single product in the waste stream. Each disposable diapered child creates about 2 TONS of trash that does not decompose.


• From birth to toilet training each child will use approximately 5,300 disposable diapers.


• It takes 440-880 lbs. of fluff pulp and 286 lbs. of plastic (including packaging) per year to supply a single baby with disposables.


• Wastewater from washing cloth diapers is relatively benign while the wastewater from pulp, paper and plastics contain solvents, sludge, heavy metals, unreacted polymers, dioxins and furans. The potential environmental impacts of the disposal of these materials are considerable.


• Disposable diapers use 37% more water than home laundered. Washing cloth diapers at home uses 50-70 gallons of water every three days. For perspective, a toilet-trained person, flushing the toilet 5-6 times a day, also uses 70 gallons of water every three days.


• Four trees are killed for each baby who wears disposables from birth thru potty training.


• At Angel Bunz, we think re-usable diapers help us follow the Rabbinic dictum not to be baal tashchis/to be wasteful.


• "G-d placed him (the man) in the Garden of Eden to work it and protect it." (B'raishis/Genesis 2:15)
  
  
• "Do not corrupt or desolate my world: for if you do, there will be no one to repair it after you." (Midrash Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:13)
  
  
Maybe we can't solve the entire landfill problem on our own but as Rabbi Tarfon says in Ethincs of Our Fathers (Pirkei Avot), "It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it." If you are serious about Tikkun Olam (repairing the world), you should be serious about cloth diapers!

Additionally, Rabbi Yissocher Frand, in his book Rabbi Yissocher Frand In Print, (Mesorah Puplications 1995. p. 88-90) discusses the state of society today:


• "We live today in a throwaway society where nothing is forever. Its not just aluminum cans and foil that gets thrown away after one use."

We at Angel Bunz feel that something is lost in our lives and our relationships when we just throw things away after one use, because, as Rabbi Frand continues, "this attitude spills over into every aspect of our lives."

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