Disposable diapers pollute the environment, encourage viral and bacterial landfill growth, are connected with increased infections, asphixiations, and deaths in infants. Want to know why to use cloth diapers?

Catherine McDiarmid, cloth-diapering guru and proprietor of BornToLove.com, has collected some very important and valuable information about the hazards of disposable diapers. The U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission backs her up. Check out all the negative aspects of disposable diapers on your baby and the environment before you head to the convenience store.

The single-use diaper market is worth $400 million per year in Canada alone.

Disposable diapers are health hazards.

• Disposable diapers contain a super-absorbent synthetic crystal called polyacrylate (that composes the inner layer), a polyethylene outer layer (waterproof), and a water-repellent liner. Polyacrylate was the material found in tampons responsible for the sometimes fatal Toxic Shock Syndrome.
• Not only did the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission receive hundreds of complaints about baby "rashes, allergic reactions to chemicals, perfumes or plastics as well as injury due to foreign objects like wood splinters and metal scraps found inside the diaper themselves", they also received consumer complaints of baby suffocation and asphyxiation of the wood pulp stuffing, the plastic outer layer or the tape tabs - resulting in death.
• Parents have also complained about their babies' "skin irritations, oozing blood, fever, vomiting and staph infections" attributed to the chemicals and plastic used in single-use diapers.
• Since single-use diapers aren't breathable, diaper rash in much more likely since heat and moisture provide a perfect environment for bacteria to grow. Doctors claim that baby girls whose parents use disposable diapers have more infections than those who use cloth.

Raw sewage is a public health hazard.

• The waste contained in single-use diapers is responsible for adding approximately 84 billion pounds of fecal matter to our earth each year. Raw sewage is transported to landfills, where it becomes a breeding ground for viruses and bacteria. One hundred viruses can survive in a soiled diaper for two weeks, not excluding the live polio virus excreted by babies who have just been vaccinated.
• According to Environment Canada, "once in landfill sites - which are not designed to handle human waste - single-use diapers threaten the health of sanity workers, water supplies, and our wildlife."

Disposable diapers are ecologically unsound.

• Each baby using disposable diapers for a two-year period uses 4.5 trees and excretes two tons of solid waste into the earth.
• $50 million a year is spent keeping up landfills, harboring pollution and reinvesting in forests to keep up with disposable diapers.
• According to Catherine, in Toronto single-use diapers use up 30,000 trees per year and over 450 tons of plastic. Forty-three million diapers are thrown away each year, weighing in at about 5,000 tons and costing half a million dollars just to take them to the landfill.
• One billion trees are used worldwide to make disposable diapers.
• Single-use diapers have little to no recycling potential and the long-term effects of them on the environment remain unknown.
• Dioxin and furans are just two of the toxins produced by bleaching wood pulp white to make diapers look clean. Both emissions from the mills and the diapers themselves are polluted with these chemicals.
• Catherine compares single-use diapers to putting a trash bag on your baby. Since plastic is a non-breathable synthetic and diapers are close to baby's most vulnerable and sensitive area, wouldn't you feel better knowing that your baby's protection wouldn't cause them to choke, asphyxiate, get infections, have allergic reactions, and the like? Wouldn't you feel better knowing that your baby is not adding to the massive, uncontrollable amount of waste being produced in this country?

Single-use diapers are expensive.

• Diaper your baby in single-use diapers for the next 2-3 years and it's going to end up costing you over $1,500.

Why use cloth diapers?

• Ecological conservation. It takes 22 pounds of cotton to cloth-diaper your baby for the next two years, while it takes somewhere between 440 - 880 pounds of "fluff pulp" and 286 pounds of plastic if you use single-use diapers.
• Pesticides. Although more pesticides would have to be used if more cotton was grown to make all-cotton cloth diapers, the overall impact on the cotton market would be fractionally small.
• Simple Economics. If you purchased the least expensive flat cloth diapers, you would gain your initial investment back in two months of using disposable diapers; even if you opted for the most expensive cloth diapers, you would still save a year's worth of disposables. In essence, your second and third diapering years are completely free.