well, I didn't care about any of this stuff till I started working for an environmental organisation as a consultant, then I read more and more research and started getting worried! The thing is, you can't let yourself get totally paranoid and start weaving your own body cream, BUT on the other hand people are getting all these cancers, infertility and allergies etc which it seems may be attributable to pollution and nasty chemicals in everyday products (hence the EU is testing all these chemicals again as part of the REACH process, precisely because most have never been tested). And looking into the EC Toys Directive I was horrified that known carcinogens are allowed in toys etc, it seems unbelievable but true, and the CE mark on toys which I always assumed was some kind of guarantee of safety is just a voluntary declaration by the manufacturer which is only checked up on on a random basis.
Anyway... I made some small changes in my lifestyle as a result, and main ones have been substituting normal cleaning products with ecover, avoiding body creams with parabens in them, avoiding sun creams except from organic/really safe suppliers, using weleda or other natural deodorants (they don't bloody work but hey), and avoiding perfume because of the musks.. just small stuff like that. using natural stuff/oils/creams instead, they do smell quite strong in themselves! also will be getting bisphenol A-free baby bottles when the time comes for expressing etc and try not to heat food in plastic containers in the microwave or whatever.
With breastfeeding, there's a lab in Germany that will actually test your milk for you for toxicity, I'm quite interested in this! Since humans are at the top of the food chain, we've absorbed loads of toxins and they are passed on in breastmilk. so although it's still of course much better than formula, there are things like brominated flame retardants from the mattress you sleep on, and up to 200 other manmade chemicals in most women's breastmilk, all being hoovered up by your child. My aim (36 weeks preg with DC2) is just to try and imbibe as few of these chemicals as possible to keep the breastmilk as 'clean' as possible.
A lot of people say, why bother with this kind of stuff when climate change is the real threat, but if I can avoid myself or my child getting some random nasty cancer or allergy in a few years' time then I'd rather play it safe..