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06/27/2008: "Reconsidering the Petition to Ban Used Breast Pumps on eBay"

This post began as a comment on another person's breastfeeding blog, who was doing a pitch for a petition to ban selling used breast pumps on eBay, touting the idea that they are 'unsanitary' and spread disease around from family to family and state to state. Besides the fact that there are many other outlets besides eBay for used breast pumps, and targeting just one web site for special treatment/harrassment is questionable, I got into a lot of technical breast pump detail, which grew into an article worthy of a post of its own.

In response to the suggestion that "hospital grade" breast pumps seperate the air space in the milk collection bottles from the air space in the hoses to the motor, and that "single user" grade breast pumps do not, I am not able to stay quiet about all that I've seen of the breast pump industry over the past two decades. These are false designations, designed for pure marketing, if ever there were any.

If you've ever looked at all the valves, flappers, and pulsating rubber pieces built into the flange kits, those were all originally marketed as proprietary backflow prevention technologies, in order to keep any milk from entering the hoses, much less reaching all the way back to the motor. When such valves were new, they could indeed be used as new "Hygienic" selling points over their competitors, because before that, yes, the air space in the collection bottles was shared with the air space in the hoses, all the way back to the motor. But the introduction of these flapper valve technologies goes back at least 15 years now, until we reach today where all companies use them, and all breast pumps, both "hospital grade" and "single user", are made with them. Even the little battery powered ones, and even Gerber's little manual pumps have gotten in on the act. If sealing off the air spaces between the suction source and the milk is what we are using as the definition for "hospital grade" vs "single user", then there really is no difference any more between them, and the terms have become meaningless and obsolete.

The flapper valve standard has been going on so long now, that is it is very rare indeed to find any breast pumps old enough on eBay to not feature backflow prevention technology. I just took a cruise through eBay, and there are fully 958 items for sale in the breast pump category. Some are accessories, and a small handful are sex toys, but the vast majority are breast pumps with flapper valve backflow prevention technology. The only few you will find without it are antique bicycle horn breast pumps that are specifically labelled as collectors items, with hardened and/or cracked rubber, suitable only for display as conversation pieces on a shelf.

Really, go look. You will not find a functional used breast pump on eBay that doesn't already seal off the motor from the milk collection, using all sterilizable parts.

So who does this petition really hurt and who does it really help? 958 breast pumps are a lot of breast pumps for individuals to be selling on eBay on any given day. So the petitions hurts the individual mother who has paid big bucks for her breast pump but who no longer has a use for it and would like to sell it. The petition hurts other individual mothers looking to save some money on a very expensive and perfectly sterilizable machine, that she only has a temporary use for. The petition does not help with sanitation, health, or hygiene, because breast pumps have been competitively built for over a decade now to seal off the motor from the milk, and to be repeatedly sterilized. The only meaning the terms "hospital grade" and "single user" has anymore is possibly how long it will take before the motor burns out. In which case it won't sell on eBay without somebody committing fraud... ... which is already against the law.

So the petition is only designed to help dealers of new breast pumps, and the companies who manufacture them. The 900+ used breast pumps for sale on eBay apparently pose a real financial threat to them, and they don't want to deal with competition in the free marketplace, even from their own hygienically designed products.

I believe in mothers.

All the Breast,