Does formaldehyde affect breast milk?

Formaldehyde is used in many construction industries. During decoration, basically some furniture contains more or less formaldehyde. However, because the smell of formaldehyde is irritating to human organs, formaldehyde is also recognized by the world as a very carcinogenic chemical. Therefore, when you are decorating your home, you should wait for a few months before moving in, otherwise formaldehyde will cause great harm to the human body. Will formaldehyde affect breast milk?

As a potential carcinogen recognized worldwide, formaldehyde has a huge impact on the human body. Formaldehyde can strongly irritate human skin and mucous membranes. If the environment is always filled with formaldehyde, the consequences will cause lung damage, respiratory symptoms, immune dysfunction, and damage to the nervous system and central nervous system.

Therefore, many mothers will worry, does this mean that formaldehyde will also affect children through breastfeeding?

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is currently no research showing that formaldehyde inhaled from the environment can enter breast milk during breastfeeding. An animal experiment was conducted before, and the conclusion showed that if the formaldehyde in the environment is higher than 2ppm (note: concentration unit), formaldehyde can be detected in animal milk. However, in most homes and work environments, the formaldehyde concentration is rarely as high as this. However, no experiments have been conducted on living people at this stage.

"The chance of formaldehyde inhaled by the mother being absorbed by the child through breast milk is very low." This is the view of the experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and many public health centers in the United States. Although breast milk still has some shortcomings in terms of chemicals, the benefits of breastfeeding are very worthy of recognition, and now the world calls on new mothers to feed their children with breast milk.

In addition to acute poisoning caused by accidental ingestion of formaldehyde liquid, general formaldehyde causes irritation and infection to the respiratory tract through inhalation. It actually takes a long time for formaldehyde to reach the blood through the respiratory tract and finally enter the breast milk. The chances of it actually affecting the child through this route are minimal.

Instead of worrying about their babies absorbing harmful gases such as formaldehyde through breastfeeding, new mothers should pay more attention to not letting their babies breathe pollutants directly. Now, my country's national professional formaldehyde testing departments, the Housing and Urban-Rural Development Commission and the former Ministry of Health have successively announced that the formaldehyde standards are no more than 0.08mg/m3 and 0.10mg/m3 respectively. If you have just had a baby, try not to decorate your new home.