Many moons ago, when I was a young pregnant teacher, I taught in a private school that was housed in an old Victorian building. The brick building had many charming features such as fireplaces, ornate moldings and glittering chandeliers in the classrooms. It also had bookcases high up to the ceiling. 
In my classroom - the Language Arts room, the top shelves held vintage children's books, some rare first edition classics. The Social Studies classroom had ancient yellowing maps that dangled down from the upper shelves. On the tippy top shelf of the Science room, far out of reach from small hands, stood vintage glass beakers with unidentified liquids from years before when the building had been a doctor’s office.
One bright spring day, I poked my 7-month belly into the Science room to lunch with a fellow teacher. A few kids joined us to show off a cool stick they found in the woods by the playground. The stick looked just like a boomerang. 
They were raring to fling it, and had come to ask for permission. Before an explanation on why it would not be appropriate to set the stick into flight, one of the children impulsively flung it. The stick hit the top shelf broadside, sending the antique beakers and their contents smashing down. There was glass and liquid everywhere.
Within minutes, the other teacher, kids and I were whisked off to the hospital. An administrator had called when he caught wind of what happened. I had never been a patient in a hospital, let alone set foot in a screaming ambulance. The kids needed me not to freak out, so I stayed relatively calm. Until…
In a composed manner, the EMT explained the seriousness of the situation to the children. That was the exact moment my blissful, uneventful pregnancy got derailed. In my 29 year-old panicked pregnant state, I heard one of the doctors say we need to watch her for poisoning:
"Mercury and a motherlode of other chemicals could have been lurking in those beakers."
"MERCURY! Isn’t that the stuff in glass thermometers that you weren’t supposed bite down hard on and break?"
“Yes, there are three kinds…for a pregnant woman, mercury can be especially damaging.”
3 Types Of Mercury
1. Elemental mercury is found in thermometers. The inhalation of fumes from this type of mercury is highly toxic. Mercury can cause significant amounts of neurological damage to babies and children.
2. Mercury salts come from industrial emissions. Breathing or ingesting mercury salts can harm the kidneys.
3. Organic mercury is what leaches into the food chain. Water can become polluted during the manufacturing of certain types of energy production. The mercury can accumulate in shellfish and fish. Organic mercury acts similarly to elemental mercury.
Yikes! Is your heart racing as fast as mine right now? I’m calming myself so I can tell you the rest of the story…
After hours of blood and urine testing and a full ER exam, I was given the green light and told to go home and watch for any unusual symptoms. UNUSUAL SYMPTOMS! With pregnancy dreams hopped up on overdrive, even unprovoked, every possible baby horror was passing through my sleep state. Now ALL of my dreams became punctuated with a capital “M” for MERCURY.
This is the first time I’ve told this story in the 25 years since my daughter was born. We were lucky - there were no “unusual symptoms”. As I am about to celebrate my beautiful, healthy daughter’s birthday (she was born on Mother’s Day weekend), those dreams are coming back to me. Did politicians think when they sided with corporate energy lobbyists to block limits on mercury pollution that we moms wouldn't notice? Let's prove them sorely wrong, and stand up for our kids by protecting the Clean Air Act.
Here's the rub: No matter how old our children become, there are things we can protect them from and things we can't (wayward boomerangs). Mercury spewing into the bodies of pregnant women and children, and accumulating in our food chain, we must stop.
What do I want for my children this Mother's Day? Oh, that's simple: Sweet Clean Air Dreams.
This post is part of the MCAF Blog Carnival: A Mother's Day Gift. We invite you to join the Carnival and tell us what you want to give your kids for Mother's Day.
My local farmer’s market just celebrated its annual Mother's Day opening. So many folks now carry reusable shopping bags. It must be one of the most remarkable eco-wins of our time. The impact of using plastic bags has been relegated to the equivalent of sleeping with the green-devil. Would you be caught dead without your reusable bags - especially at the farmer’s market?
