DISPOSABLE DIAPERS HAVE DANGERS

My mother-in-law gave me diaper service for a month when my daughter was born. After that month, I couldn’t do without the diaper service. It was so easy to rinse off the solids from the diaper and throw it in the diaper pail, then wait for my weekly pick up.

When she got a little older, I tried some disposable diapers, and it turned her little bottom beet red, and she got blisters. She was allergic to something in those diapers.

I went back to the cloth diapers and the diaper service, which used a sensitive laundry detergent and did no harm to her.

There’s the debate on which is better, which is cheaper in the diaper industry and probably in mom groups. Both options will come pretty close in price.

Is price the best factor to judge by?

I don’t think price is the best way to decide whether you should use cloth versus disposable diapers. All of the disposable things in our universe now have caused great harm in the long run to the planet, which impacts everything.

Throw-away diapers are convenient, sure. They are also more likely to leak than cloth diapers. Parents may also be inclined not to check as often for the need to change a diaper if it's disposable. Disposables often contain a layering of fluff material for comfort, Super Absorbent Polymer (SAP), which is made of crystals or gel, and it is possible for a toddler to ingest this by mistake!

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), as part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), conducts research on fundamental biomedical problems at the molecular level using mathematical and computational methods, as well as maintains collaborations with several NIH institutes, academia, industry, and other governmental agencies. They conducted a study, Volatile Organic Compounds in Disposable Diapers and Baby Wipes in the US: A Survey of Products and Health Risks, published September 2023. In the study, baby diapers contained several known or suspected carcinogens, including benzene and 1,4-dioxane, and the lifetime cancer risk from some diapers approached 1 per million under a worst-case scenario. Store-brand products had higher levels of VOCs than generic brands, and products labeled "organic" or "for sensitive skin" did not necessarily have lower levels.

Children now have significantly more allergies than they did years ago. Certainly, some of these mentioned chemicals and other products with chemicals in them, such as plastic, are causing this.

The plastic on a disposable diaper puts the chemical in the plastic near the baby’s reproductive organs - all day. Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in diapers may change the immunity of children; having a strong immune system is so important lifelong.

Leak-proof polymers, super absorbent polymers, and some scented chemicals are the key factors for everything from chronic diaper rash to respiratory problems like asthma, male infertility, and testicular cancer.

Why would you want to expose your baby to toxic chemicals, especially near their reproductive organs, when you could use a safe option - a cloth diaper?

Yes, it’s a pain to wash diapers. That’s why there’s a diaper service.

There’s a service for everything these days. Somebody will come and pick up your car and take it to the car wash, returning it clean. You can have a person come and walk your dog or clean the dog poop a part of your yard. There are in-home chefs, house cleaning services, and Door Dash deliveries; new auto owners can get home delivery of their purchased vehicle; there are mobile pet vets and grooming; and mobile waste can cleaning services - there’s a service for everything.

Baby diaper service is a service of excellence and health that parents might want to consider. Disposable diapers can be thrown in the trash, but their chemicals pose serious dangers to children.

Cite - Environ Sci Technol

. 2023 Sep 19;57(37):13732-13743. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.3c02862. Epub 2023 Sep 8.Nan Lin 1 2, Ning Ding 3, Emily Meza-Wilson 4, Amila Manuradha Devasurendra 1, Christopher Godwin 1, Sung Kyun Park 1 3, Stuart Batterman 1

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PMID: 37683294 DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.3c02862Lin N, Ding N, Meza-Wilson E, Devasurendra AM, Godwin C, Park SK, Batterman S. Volatile Organic Compounds in Disposable Diapers and Baby Wipes in the US: A Survey of Products and Health Risks. Environ Sci Technol. 2023 Sep 19;57(37):13732-13743. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.3c02862. Epub 2023 Sep 8. PMID: 37683294.