Lightening the Load

Before you've finished breakfast, you may have come into contact with dozens of synthetic chemicals: in your shampoo and moisturiser, your non-stick pan, your food packaging, your water and the air inside your home. None of them is likely to harm you on its own. But together, day after day, they add up to what scientists call our chemical body burden.

What's in our bodies?

Thanks to modern testing, we can now measure many of these chemicals in blood and urine. In large US surveys, BPA, a chemical used in some plastics and food can linings, was found in the urine of more than 90% of people tested.¹ PFAS, the so-called "forever chemicals", are found in the blood of nearly everyone tested. And in 2022, Dutch scientists found tiny particles of plastic in the blood of most of the people they tested.²

None of us can avoid these chemicals completely. But the encouraging news, as we'll see, is that our levels can fall remarkably quickly when we make a few simple changes.

The main culprits

• Phthalates: used to soften plastics and carry fragrance. They're found in vinyl, food packaging and many products listing "fragrance" or "parfum".
• Bisphenols (BPA, BPS): used in hard plastics, the linings of food tins and the shiny paper of till receipts.
• Parabens: preservatives in some cosmetics, lotions and toiletries.
• PFAS ("forever chemicals"): used in non-stick pans, stain- and water-proof fabrics, some food packaging and firefighting foams. They can take years to leave the body.
• Flame retardants: added to furniture foam, electronics and carpets, and shed into household dust.
• Volatile organic compounds (VOCs): given off by air fresheners, scented candles, some cleaning products, paints and new furniture.
• Microplastics: tiny fragments shed from plastic packaging, bottles, synthetic clothing and more.
• Pesticides: on non-organic food and in garden sprays. (See Why Eat Organic?)

Why they matter

Many of these chemicals are endocrine disruptors: they can mimic, block or interfere with the body's hormones. The Endocrine Society, the world's largest organisation of hormone specialists, has warned that they're linked with problems of fertility, metabolism, the thyroid and development.³ Some examples from the research: (See Fertile Ground.)

• Phthalates and development. In a US study, baby boys whose mothers had higher phthalate levels during pregnancy were more likely to show subtle changes in the development of their genitals.⁴
• PFAS and immunity. Children with higher PFAS levels produced fewer protective antibodies after their routine vaccinations.⁵ It was this effect on the immune system that led European food safety experts to set strict new safety limits for PFAS in 2020.
• Microplastics and the heart. In a 2024 study, people whose artery plaques contained microplastics were around four and a half times more likely to have a heart attack, stroke or die over the next three years than those whose plaques didn't.⁶

Much of this research comes from studies of real people living with many chemicals at once, so no single study can isolate one chemical's effect. That reflects the complexity of everyday life, not a lack of evidence: laboratory studies help explain how these chemicals act on the body, and the findings keep pointing the same way. There's enough evidence to make reducing our exposure a sensible, gentle step for anyone, especially during pregnancy, childhood and when trying to conceive.

You can't control every chemical in the world. But you can control a great many of those in your own home.

How quickly levels fall

This is the most hopeful part of the story. Many everyday chemicals leave the body within hours or days, so small changes make a real difference, fast:

• Swapping toiletries. When teenage girls switched to personal care products free of certain chemicals for just three days, their levels of some parabens fell by around 44%, and their levels of a common phthalate and of triclosan fell by around a quarter to a third.⁷
• Eating fresh. When families ate fresh, unpackaged food for three days, their BPA levels fell by about two thirds, and levels of a common phthalate by more than half.⁸
• Skipping the tin. In a Harvard study, eating one serving of tinned soup a day for five days raised people's BPA levels by more than 1,000% compared with fresh soup.⁹

Your body's own detox systems

The body has its own remarkable ways of clearing chemicals, and they work best when they're well supported:

• The liver changes chemicals in two stages, phase 1 and phase 2, so they can be removed from the body. Phase 2 depends on nutrients such as glutathione, found in and built from foods like garlic, onions, eggs and leafy greens.
• The gut carries many chemicals out in bile, and fibre helps bind them so they leave rather than being reabsorbed.
• The kidneys filter the blood and remove waste in urine, so drinking enough water matters.
• The skin plays a small part too. In small studies, some chemicals, such as BPA, have been found in people's sweat.¹⁰

Some foods give these systems a powerful helping hand. In a trial in China, a daily drink made from broccoli sprouts, rich in sulforaphane, increased how quickly people cleared the air pollutant benzene by 61%.¹¹

Herbal medicine has its own time-honoured cleansing herbs, and three of the finest grow free as "weeds" across Britain. Dandelion root gently stimulates the liver and the flow of bile, burdock root is a classic tonic for the liver, skin and lymph, and cleavers is the traditional spring herb for the lymphatic system. Herbalists call herbs like these "alteratives": rather than forcing a dramatic "detox", they gradually help the body's own clearing systems work better. Milk thistle, whose seeds contain silymarin, has been used for the liver since ancient Greece and is one of the most widely studied liver-protecting herbs.¹² As with all herbs, the right choice depends on the person, so it's best to use them with a practitioner's guidance, especially if you take any medicines. (See Closing the Divide and Bitter Is Better.)

Simple swaps, room by room

In the kitchen

• Store and reheat food in glass, ceramic or stainless steel, and never microwave food in plastic.
• Cook with cast iron, stainless steel or ceramic pans instead of scratched non-stick ones.
• Choose fresh or frozen food over tins, and food in glass jars over plastic where you can.
• Filter your drinking water. Activated carbon and reverse-osmosis filters can reduce many contaminants, including some PFAS.
• Carry a stainless steel or glass water bottle.

In the bathroom

• Use fewer products, and choose simple ones with short ingredient lists.
• Look for "fragrance-free" rather than "unscented", and avoid products listing "fragrance" or "parfum" where you can.
• Ingredient-scanning apps can help you check products quickly in the shop.

Around the home

• Open windows every day to let fresh air in and indoor pollutants out.
• Swap air fresheners and scented candles for fresh air, houseplants or a few drops of pure essential oil.
• Clean with simple ingredients: white vinegar, bicarbonate of soda and unscented soap clean most things beautifully.
• Take your shoes off at the door, and dust with a damp cloth and vacuum with a HEPA filter to reduce chemical-laden dust.
• Say no to paper receipts, or handle them as little as possible.

At Rootwise, lightening your chemical load is often part of a plan for better hormonal balance, energy and gut health. We'll help you find simple, realistic changes, and support your body's own detox systems with the right foods and herbs.