What to Expect the Toddler Years (185 page)

Dinnerware, glassware, and plastic containers.
What you serve food on and store foods in is also important. Be sure your dinnerware is lead-free; antiques and imports are more likely to contain lead. Do not use lead crystal or tin or aluminum cans soldered with lead for storage, since lead can leach into foods or beverages. There is also concern about plastic bottles and sippy cups made with Bisphenol A (BPA), which may adversely affect brain development. The FDA is re-examining the issue and recommends that in the meantime, you avoid buying or using products with BPA.

Most water in the United States is fit to drink, though more still needs to be done to make it safer still. In some municipalities, however, even minimal water protection standards are not met, and the water is contaminated by higher than acceptable levels of chemicals and occasionally by hazardous microorganisms. When water is unsafe, it’s important to put community pressure on officials to correct the problem.

The following will help you make sensible decisions concerning the water your family drinks:

Testing for contaminants.
Unfortunately, you can’t tell whether your tap water is safe by looking at it, smelling it, or even tasting it. Most dangerous contaminants don’t change the appearance, smell, or taste of water; they are colorless, odor-free, and tasteless. Only testing can give you the lowdown on the water that comes from your tap. Testing, which isn’t complicated, should only be done by a disinterested party: a testing service that does not sell filters or bottled water or anything else other than testing. In some municipalities, the water company may come and test for you. Or you can call the Safe Drinking Water Hot line, (800) 426-4791, for the telephone number of the office in your state that certifies labs and can refer you to one. It’s usually recommended that you take samples first thing in the morning (
without
first letting the water run) from each tap used for drinking or cooking water. Many testing labs provide plastic bottles for collecting the samples. Tests are generally not very expensive, and the results are often available within two or three weeks.

Well water, once believed to be a reliable source of pure water, is also subject to pollution. If your water comes from a well, it should be checked for run-off contaminants, especially if you live in a farming or industrial area. The water should also be checked periodically for bacterial contamination.

Dealing with chlorine
. Very long-term ingestion of chlorine, used in most municipalities to keep water safe, has tentatively been linked to some health problems. If your water supply is particularly high in chlorine (sometimes you can actually smell it), boil the water before using, aerate it in a blender, or let it stand uncovered overnight to allow the chemical to dissipate. You can also use an activated carbon system to filter the water.

Dealing with lead.
Lead in the water presents a serious danger to young children (as well as to pregnant women), so it is especially important for parents to be certain that the family’s drinking water is lead-free. Lead in drinking water comes not only from municipal water systems;
it also leaches into tap water from lead pipes or lead solder in the plumbing in individual buildings. So each home needs to be tested—unless it was built, completely replumbed, or the water main was replaced, after 1986 when laws outlawing use of lead pipes and lead solder went into effect. Testing, which should be carried out on the water coming from each faucet used for drinking (see page 537 for information on finding a testing service), is best done when the water is first turned on in the morning. It’s at this time, when water has been sitting overnight, that lead is most likely to accumulate.

If you do find lead in your water, you needn’t remortgage your home to put in new plumbing or break your lease and find another apartment. In most cases, all that’s needed is to run the water before each use until it’s cold (often it will go from cool to warmer before turning really cold) in order to flush out the lead. The water flowing from the street right to your tap will not have time to pick up dangerous levels of lead. To avoid wasting water, you can save the first-run water for washing dishes and other household uses. Once the water is running cold, you can also fill the tea kettle, the coffee pot, and a couple of bottles to store in the refrigerator for drinking. Never use hot tap water for cooking or drinking, since it leaches more lead from pipes.

Water purification or treatment systems.
In spite of the hype from purveyors of such systems, they are rarely necessary. Never plunk down your money for one without first having your water tested by an independent lab (see page 537). When a system is needed, the choice will depend on the contaminants in your water. Carbon filters remove a variety of organic chemicals, including pesticides, as well as odors and bad tastes. They may possibly remove radon (which can enter the air from running tap water), but since the radon can disperse from every water source in the house (taps, toilets, washing machines, and so on), the only way to eliminate the problem is to install a point-of-entry carbon filter that purifies from the point at which the city water enters the home.

When tap water is brackish (high in salt), high in nitrates, or loaded with lead, iron, or other heavy metals, a reverse osmosis system is required. But since such systems are very expensive and waste a lot of water, be sure it’s really needed before deciding to install one.

Check with the National Sanitation Foundation, by logging on to their web-site:
www.nsf.org
, before you buy any water filtering system. They can also give you additional information on filtering your water.

Bottled water.
Though many families, worried about the safety of their local water supply, have turned to bottled water, there is no absolute assurance that water that comes in a bottle is any purer or safer than water that comes from the tap. NSF certification on the bottle offers some security, but something can go wrong with a particular run of water (as drinkers of one popular brand found out a few years ago).

Some bottled water is nothing more than tap water from someone else’s tap in a bottle. Some contains little or no fluorides, so it will not protect the teeth of babies or toddlers. (If you use bottled water, check with the manufacturer for information on fluoride content, then check with your dentist to see if it is too little, too much, or just the right amount.)

If you prefer the taste of a particular bottled water to your own tap water, or if the safety of your water is questionable, certainly use bottled water and give it to your toddler. You may, however, want to choose a brand that is NSF-certified and to send a bottle of it off for testing before using it regularly. (Unfortunately, however, there’s no guarantee, even if the test turns out fine, that the quality will be uniform in every bottle.)

Your child has learned to roll over, to pull up, to cruise, to stand, to walk. Graduated from porridge to peanut-butter sandwiches, from crib gyms to jungle gyms, and (possibly) from crib to bed. Mastered so much, grown and matured in so many ways, come so far, so fast. And yet, like most children his or her age, your child is probably still wearing diapers.