Women Health and The Environment

The FDA standards of acceptable exposure to environmental contaminants are often based on how men are affected. However, women’s bodies are different- they have different organs, hormones, and the higher potential to store contaminants in their bodies due to how women carry their natural body fat. The ability for chemicals and contaminants to stay in the body is known as body burden. This is tested though urine, blood, body fat, and breast milk. Women carry these chemicals inhigher dosage and in more ways than men. One of the greatest potentials of harm is to do the fact that women’s bodies are humans first natural environment. In-vitro harm can be done to children as it enters the mothers body passes through the umbilical card and then later through breast milk. The effects of pesticides, and other contaminants found in products so widely used such as plastic are linked to the health of women, and than passed on to their children.

There is growing evidence that many of the diseases effecting women’s lives, such as cancers, heart disease (which is the number one cause of death for women), endometriosis and fertility challenges are all connected to the conditions of the environment. Contaminants found in the environment make their way into women’s bodies, causing all sorts of reproductive, and general health issues. Cleaning up the environment, what we grow food in, as well as the products we produce and how we make them can change the evidence to point in a new direction of healthiness for all no matter their gender.