Avoid Environmental Toxins
This can be difficult as there are few warnings to alert you to the substances you encounter nearly everywhere. The food you eat, the water you drink, and the air you breathe are all laden with environmental toxins.
Use Your Senses
If you notice a smell or taste that doesn't belong, that should be a huge red flag. Some contaminants can't be detected, but many can. For example, vinyl chloride has a sweet, almost pleasant odor. And that new car smell? Keep the windows open.
Water Filtering
You can filter drinking and cooking water to remove most of the chemicals if you have a high quality filter, such as one of the gravity-fed filters available on the market. Some will even remove PFAS and Glyphosate compounds.
I thought my well water would have been pristine, being in the mountains at over 8,000 feet above sea level. But after experiencing progressive mental fogginess and an increasingly unbearable 'drugged out' feeling over a number of months after moving there, I tried, out of desperation, an Alexapure gravity-fed filter. It made a huge difference in about a week or two.
I don't know what the filter is removing; nothing unusual appeared in the water toxicology tests I had done. I suspect some kind of hard-to-detect organic compounds that are seeping into the water table, perhaps some of my neighbors' medications.
There are a number of other similar systems, including the Berkey and the Water Drop King. You can expect to pay $200-$400 for a quality unit that actually filters the chemicals you want to remove.
Buyer Beware: Counterfeits and lookalike brands are rampant; some suppliers even comingle authentic filters with fakes in their warehouses.
PFAS and Dioxins
These are everywhere, but you can at least avoid items that have high concentrations that can be absorbed by direct skin contact, or even by coming into contact with dust that had settled on them:
- Stain-Resistant Textiles: Carpets, sofas, car interiors.
- Food Packaging: Takeout containers, pizza boxes, plastic containers, disposable bowls and plates, food wrappings.
- Non-stick coated cookware (pretty much all of it).
- Most cosmetics
- Many dental floss products, i.e. and especially Oral-B Glide.
As noted on the Lowering PFAS Levels page, folic acid may help prevent PFAS chemicals from building up in your body. (Maybe.)
Bisphenols (BPA and similar compounds)
- Limit your consumption of canned goods.
- Never heat food in plastic containers, or the to go packaging from a restaurant.
- Choose foods packaged in glass jars instead of plastic.
- Be wary of coffee makers – the plastic components and single-serving packets can be problematic.
- Use water bottles and other liquid containers made from glass, porcelain, or stainless steel.
- Don't assume that BPA-Free containers are any safer. (See: Chemical Whac-A-Mole)
See also:
- New study finds 'new car smell' to be potentially dangerous – because of volatile organic compounds used in the plastics.
- That 'New Car Smell' Could Be Toxic Carcinogens – focuses on flame retardant coatings.
- Many PFAS forever chemicals are toxic – here’s how to avoid them
- 10 Ways to Reduce Exposure to BPA at Home