Toxic advice tells mums-to-be to ditch all but the kitchen sink

Pregnant women should avoid deodorant, moisturising, painting their toenails, and using chemical-based cleaning products in their homes.

Neither should they willingly wash their hair with chemical-based shampoos, eat tinned foods, or carry their packed lunch in a Tupperware box.

Their non-stick frying pans should be put in storage and takeaway pizza or Chinese menus binned.

Not even a bottle of mineral water is truly safe for Pregnant Woman, who should deign to eat or drink from a plastic container.

Pregnant Woman is now, it seems, at risk from her early-morning shower onwards. Her grooming routine, her need to clean her home, and every meal she eats could pose an avalanche of threats to Baby.

And as for the customary trip to Ikea to do up the nursery? Thing of the past.

The edict from on high is that Pregnant Woman should “minimise the purchase and use of newly produced household furniture and fabrics”.

And, in a further blow to the embattled motor industry, the purchase of a new car could be harmful while Woman is pregnant.

It’s not that all those pregnancy hormones could go to her head and she could end up careering down a suburban road at 150km/h. The problem is exposure to potentially toxic plastics used in the car’s manufacture.

All this guidance isn’t coming from extreme left zealots who want to declare a new world order where the car, aeroplane, meat, and chemicals are banned.

It’s coming from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. And what is truly frightening is that these recommendations aren’t based on scientific research, but are more of the “just in case variety”.

The organisation says it has no direct evidence of harm to pregnant women from everyday chemical exposure from substances like phthalates, bisphenol A and PCBs, but that women should “put safety first” and “assume that risk is present even when it may be minimal or eventually proven to be unfounded”.

Since when do esteemed medical organisations issuing recommendations based on inconclusive results? Surely when something is inconclusive, further tests are done so that the researchers can reach a definite endpoint?

Expectant mothers, especially first timers, are renowned for their health zealotry, but if Pregnant Woman is to “put safety first”, she will have to chuck the contents of her bathroom cabinet, make-up bag, cupboards, and possibly end up entirely paranoid about her surroundings for the next nine months.

In essence, she will look at moving to the hills in a yurt to play the ukulele and knit as essentially her first-world environment is a threat to her child.

What is far more scary though, is that if the toxic fumes from these everyday items of modern day life disrupt hormone balance to such an extent, why isn’t there an outright ban on them?