By the time you read this editorial I will be a mother. In preparation for motherhood, I read all the popular parenting tomes such as the What to Expect When You're Expecting series as well as medical textbooks and alternative essays critical of some traditional child rearing methods. Most of them focus on how parents should avoid screwing up their prodigy through poor diet or bad habits. So I took precautions, eschewed anything potentially hazardous to my developing fetus and sterilized everything in sight, especially when my nesting instincts kicked into fifth gear. Just when I had achieved some peace of mind, I came across three new studies warning that simply by using my computer and even breathing I could severely harm my baby's environment and ultimately compromise his IQ, cause learning disorders and trigger deadly diseases such as cancer. The risks are paticularly high for women working in private industrial settings.
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