Disposable Nappies can cause Infertility!!!??? Tell me it isn't true??

[M2T]

Please help put someone right.
One my colleauges is pregnant with her 1st child and she is EXTREMELY critical of how anyone else raises their child. Things like.... apparently I will have damaged ds's spine coz I had a Britax Travel System..... babies should lie FLAT until they are 12 weeks old (EH??).... baby wipes are apparently terrible for babies skin and they leave a horrible residue (there was me thinking that was moisturiser!).

The latest one is...

Disposable nappies, especially Huggies (the ones I use surprisingly enough) can cause infertility in men, asthma and excema!
Apparently the research is being done in Germany according to her midwife.

Tell me this is a lot of bollocks please.

I found the ecobaby ones didn't quite cope with the amount of effluent my dd produces, but she is quite exceptional.

Just can't face real nappies myself. (And, I have it on good authority, the partner of the woman who set up WEN has been sighted, some years ago, furtively purchasing Huggies in a late-night chemist...)

What do you have to do to the reusable nappy when they poo???
Do you have to scrrrrrrrape it into the bin/toilet or rinse in in your sink (YUCK!) before washing it?? The smell is bad enough without prolonging the agony!

You chuck the whole thing out and nip out to the chemist, babe.

LOL - Montherinferior... I think I'd last 2 days using re-usables!

I would be ok if ds would just stop pooing!

We're starting to potty train him, but I MIGHT consider them next time.... but only until the poo starts to really stink.

M2T - you use a liner with the nappy - if its a flushable one you just chuck it in the loo and flush; if its a fleece one you just hold it over the loo and the poo plops off (or if its a 'sticker', dangle it in the loo and flush over it). Its no big deal and there really is LESS smell than putting a nappy with poo still sitting in it to fester in a nappy bin...this way the poo disappears quickly into the place poos should go, which seems much more hygienic to me!

I only started using washables a few months ago - always thought it would be loads of hassle, but felt bad about the landfill - and have found that it really isn't that much of a big deal. But I am very pragmatic and use a mixture - think disposables are great really apart from the problems of 'disposing' of them (perhaps they should be called non-disposables!!) - personally I find the clothie-obsessive stuff rather a turn off - I want to SAVE money, not spend a fortune on little leopard skin fleecey wraps etc etc

I agree that disposables make quite a lot of waste - but hey - so does all the packaging on everything I buy - layer after layer of plastic, on food packaging, and far too much on toys in particular. Nappies only account for about 2per cent of landfill. Not saying that's good, just saying it's not as bad as you might think. This is very much off the point I know, but I do think women get 'blamed' for so many things - our tampons etc are polluting the sea, our children's nappies (and women do deal with most nappy-related things from buying to changing) are polluting the earth, when actually they contribute only the tiniest amount to both. I just think it's easier to make a woman feel guilty than a man, particularly a mother. And we disposable users (well, me, anyway) are often pretty sensitive to any implication, however vague, that we might be harming our kids. I know none of you are saying that, but it does sometimes seem to hang in the air in cloth v disposable debates!

Oh and my ds tries to put his own nappy on. I think he likes them

I do agree with you aloha - it is waste disposal in general that is a problem, and I do my best to reduce the amount I generate (individually plastic wrapped vegetables are my real bugbear!!) Also agree that parents of small children get more than their fair share of guilt trips! But I have found that I CAN reduce the number of nappies I am throwing in the bin without any great hardship, so I do (and I think I am saving money now too). Certainly don't think that disposables harm babies - those arguments leave me cold.

Why not bypass the disp/washables decision altogether and do this instead.

Suedonim - that link doesn't seem to work. What was it?

Oh, sorry, M2T. I'll have another shot.... article . Better? If not, try cutnpasting seafish.freeyellow.com/. HTH!

Oh that worked that time. Is this serious? ROFL

"In touch with your childs eliminations" Specially like that statement. Back to the Yurt I think!

Oh god, that is by turns hilarious and disturbing! Actually it reminds me of what people used to do a couple of generations back - put very young babies on the potty every few hours and then claim they were 'toilet trained' and 12 months or whatever. The ironic thing is that to my mind it seems the complete antithesis of 'natural parenting' or whatever you want to call it....

sorry, 'at' 12 months. How come I only make mistakes when I don't preview?

Nota couple of generations Elliott - thats what my Mum did with me. But must have saved her a lot of washing in the old twin tub.

Sorry M2T but you might have to get used to scraping the poo out if you're potty training!

Tee hee, hate to tell you this, everyone, but the link explains exactly what most mums here in Indonesia do with their babies!! People can't afford nappies and anyway have nowhere to wash them properly, so babies just wear these teeny cute little knickers. But, being serious, the climate here makes it easy, as people basically live outdoors. It would be much harder to do in our UK climate and with all our fitted carpets and soft furnishings.

Disposable userswhat do you do with the poo in a disposable? Just stick the whole thing in the bin to stink out the bathroom, and then go untreated into the landfill? We use a combination of cloth and disposables (the latter mainly at night and when we haven't managed to get enough washing done ...) but when she poos wearing a disposable I put the poo down the toilet before throwing the nappy awaymaybe because I got used to it with the cloth. It is much more hassle getting the poo off a disposable though. Don't other people do this with disposables?

Ruth21 - I have never heard of anyone doing this. The only thing in a pooey nappy that is totally natural and doesn't damage the atmosphere is the poo itself! That sounds like extra work and totally defeats the purpose of disposables does it not?
When ds poos the nappy goes into a biodegradable nappy sack and goes straight out to the wheelie bin.... so hanging around the house... the smell is just too awful (must take that from his father ).

Isn't it technically illegal to put untreated sewage in a landfill site? Not that I am for a moment suggesting that anyone is likely to be prosecuted for it, I was just under the impression that "officially" it should not be done.

Not to mention that it will then contaminate the land, and eventually the underlying water table.

I can't help feeling that strictly speaking one should make an effort to "put the poo in the toilet" - if you are changing the nappy at home, and it is not a runny/well squished on one. On th occassions I used disposables I tended to empty them if possible - with an older child it is so often just a matter of hold it (the nappy, not the child!) over the toilet and shake....

How come it's ok to let your dog sh*t in the park as long as you lift it afterwards... wrap it in a plastic bag and bin it. That's what the council litter campaigns tell you to do. This is then dumped in a landfill site.

Ruth21, I also use a mixture of cloth and disposable, mainly cloth, but the childminder uses disposables so I have to put him in one in the morning and he comes home in one. I normally flop the poo into the toilet and flush it when he is wearing a disposable. I am a domestic slut only empty the bins once a week, (we don't have wheelie bins around us and a tiny garden so no dustbins) if I left a poo in a bag in the bedroom it would be uninhabitable after a few hours. I was very proud of myself for not buying a Sangenic! I guess it is because I'm used to flushing liners down the loo and don't have a problem with scraping off the bits with my fingernails.

but suedonim, if they COULD afford nappies they would probably use them, wouldn't they? Of course there was a time before nappies, but surely the reason we've invented them is because they are useful??

Oakmaiden - I'm sure you're right that technically all human waste is meant to be incinerated. Hospitals and larger nurseries certainly have to keep human faeces and body waste separately bagged for separate disposal.
The other problem with landfill is that it isn't always "filled" straight away, so various wildlife (foxes. birds etc) has a good root around and a scavenge, reopening nappy bags as they go. That's not a huge problem I guess unless the poo has live vaccine traces in it, in which case goodness knows what's spread around the countryside.

As for dog poo, I would hope it's incinerated - I'd like to know thoug - hadn't thought of that one - eurgh.

Me being a rather sad individual, am now wondering about this. So I have e-mailed the environmetal section of my local council. i said:

"This is a bit of an odd enquiry, but the subject came up in a discussion, and I was wondering if you could let me know the facts of the matter, or forward this to someone who can!

What we were wondering is:

1. What is the official policy on the disposal of soiled disposable nappies? Most people just wrap them in a bag and put them in the bin - which is then generally emptied at a landfill site. As you are no doubt aware there are environmental implications to this - but no real alternative.

2. What happens to do dog soil that is (as the council requests) wrapped up and placed in one of the special red bins? Does this also go to a landfill site? If this is so, are the environmental implications of this similar to those caused by uhman waste disposed of by this method?"

Because i hadn't thought of the dog poo issue - yuck! And now I want to know that they do something better with it!

Wow this is very heated in places - not sure if I date post here! (Wimp!) but having just read through the whole thing I'd like to make a few comments.

As a researcher I feel the need to defend the original research to a degree. OK so nothing is conclusive in their findings - but they've not claimed that as far as I can see. It is the media grasping hold of the story that is the problem. All research has to begin somewhere. Every drug and procedure used in pregnancy, childbirth and all other aspects of medicine was a hypothesis once. Someone make a link and it was tested. Sometimes the link might have been a wild one but it paid off (actually come to think of it seem to remember that a lot of procedures and things haven;t actually been tested so maybe ignore that bit...)

Anyway this is initial research and about time something has been done as far as I'm concerned. OK so it was a small sample and their were flaws (lack of wraps) but that is for the next group of researchers to fix. We need someone else to replicate and explore other possibilities etc. The problem is the research will probalby NOT be redone - not because its not correct or anything but because there will be no-one to fund it. Research is funded by large corporations, drug companies etc. Who is going to pay to research cloth?

Also this thing about filling landfills etc. Disposable nappies were not created simply because they were useful - but because someone saw that a lot of people hate pooey nappies and the general mood of society is that its OK to throw things away, hence all the packaging on food etc. Disposable nappies exploit a weakness in mums - the desire to make life easier - and use propaganda to convince them that disposables are easier, not necessarily true if you look at the washable nappy threads. But the bottom line for the companies is that there is more money to be made in a throw away product that in one that will be reused so which would you encourage people to use?

I once left a bag of dirty nappies outside the back door to go to the dustbin. One of the dogs tore it to shreds and having seen the mess which followed (and being the one to clean it up!) I can honestly say that the thought of disposables in land fill, to be explored by rats, foxes, crows, gulls etc turns my stomach.