The Toxic Home (Chapter 3) | Do This, Detox That

Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses. — Exodus 12:19

Opening the Door of the House

Now we open the door of the house. Wipe your feet.

We walk into the kitchen and the bathroom and the bedroom and the laundry room. We turn on the tap and look at what comes out of it. We open the cabinet under the sink and look at what is lurking in it. We open the bathroom cabinet and read the labels on the cosmetics and the deodorant and the shampoo, small print and all. We look at the pans in the cupboard and the containers in the refrigerator. We look at the floor we walk on and the air we breathe.

This is the room of the modern family’s life that has, for most of my students, the most accumulated leaven in it. Not because anyone in the household has been careless. The household has done nothing wrong. It has simply been living in the world that the last seventy-five years of industrial chemistry produced, and that world has been quietly adding to the family’s load whether anyone intended it or not. Nobody signed up for it; it came with the lease.

On the night before Passover, my husband walks through our house by candlelight, looking for the last forgotten crumb. This chapter is the same search with a different candle. We are looking for the things that came into the house without our noticing: in the water, in the plastic, in the nonstick pan, in the products in the bathroom cabinet and under the sink, and in the air itself.

The home is one of the largest sources of the Total Body Burden. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has long reported that the air inside the average American home is two to five times more polluted than the air outside. Modern homes are built to save energy, so they are sealed up tight as a thermos, and whatever is released inside (from furniture, carpets, cleaners, fragrances, the stove and any hidden mold) stays inside. People in industrialized countries spend about 90 percent of their time indoors. The house is where a family spends most of its hours, and so it is where much of the total body burden I described in Chapter 1 comes from. I call it the cumulative load of the modern home.

The good news is that the home is the part of the load you control. You cannot choose what the factory down the river releases. You can choose what comes out of your own tap, what your food is stored in, what you cook in, what you put on your skin and what you clean with. Many of the fixes cost little or nothing. In your own house, you are the regulator.

So, before we go further, let me be honest about what this chapter is going to ask of you. I am going to ask you to filter your water, at the kitchen sink and in the shower. I am going to ask you to change your cookware: the Teflon pans go, the aluminum pans go, and cast iron, stainless steel, glass and ceramic stay. I am going to ask you to read the labels on your personal care products and replace the ones you cannot pronounce. (If it sounds like a spelling-bee word, it is probably on the list.) I am going to ask you to clean up the cleaning products under your sink, because they are released into the air every time they are used. And I am going to ask you to open your windows.

None of these changes is expensive on its own. Some of them are inconvenient. All of them are within the reach of an ordinary household. And none of them has to happen this week. Breathe; the windows can wait until you finish the chapter.

Water Beyond Fluoride

Fluoride has its own chapter (Chapter 2). But the water that reaches your tap can carry other things too, some of them uninvited, and the second substance added to it on purpose is chlorine.

Chlorine. Chlorine was introduced into American water supplies in the early twentieth century as a disinfectant, and I want to be fair about it: the introduction was a public health success. Municipal water is treated to be free of the germs that cause cholera, typhoid and dysentery, diseases that killed enormous numbers of city dwellers in the nineteenth century. That was one of the great public health advances of the twentieth century, and I will not pretend otherwise. Chlorinated water is far safer than untreated water. Credit where credit is due.

But chlorine does not politely stay in the pipes and the reservoir. It is consumed by the people drinking the water. It is inhaled as steam in the shower. It is absorbed through the skin during bathing. And it has chemistry of its own, which it practices on whatever it meets.

Chlorine reacts with organic matter in the water (leaves, soil, farm runoff) to form disinfection by-products, the best known being the trihalomethanes (THMs), among them chloroform. Yes, that chloroform. Long-term exposure to high levels of these by-products has been linked in studies to bladder cancer and, in pregnancy, to reproductive problems. An often-cited 1970s report of the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality put the risk of bladder and rectal cancer at roughly ninety-three percent higher among people drinking chlorinated water. I want to be careful with that figure, because the comparison is not clean: the Americans drinking unchlorinated water were few, mostly rural, and different in other ways. Take it as a rough signal rather than a precise number. But the underlying point holds, and the mechanism is plausible.

Chlorine is also a halogen. As I explained in Chapter 2, it competes with iodine, which the thyroid needs, and it does not play fair. Every shower and every glass of chlorinated water adds to the halogen pressure.

Chloramines. Many cities now use chloramine (chlorine combined with ammonia) instead. Chloramine reacts more slowly with organic matter, so it forms fewer by-products. But it is harder to filter: it slips right through many simple carbon filters that would have caught chlorine. If your city uses chloramine, you need a filter rated for it, not just a hopeful one.

Lead, from old pipes, lead service lines and lead solder. The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, which began in 2014, made the problem famous, but lead service lines remain buried under many older cities. There is no known safe level of lead. A home with old plumbing, children or a pregnant woman should have its water tested. Lead is taught in full in Chapter 4.

Arsenic, naturally present in groundwater in parts of the country, especially in private wells. Natural, yes; harmless, no (also in Chapter 4).

PFAS, the forever chemicals you will meet later in this chapter, and traces of agricultural chemicals and pharmaceuticals, most of which the legal standard does not regulate. Nobody ordered them; they came anyway.

The shower matters as much as the drinking glass. Chlorine is absorbed through the skin and inhaled as steam. A hot shower in chlorinated water can deliver as much chlorine as drinking the same water, or more, in some studies, because the chlorine in the steam goes straight into the lungs and the bloodstream. Your morning shower may be a bigger drink than your morning glass. A shower filter is one of the cheapest changes in this book. They cost between twenty and seventy dollars, they are easy to install, and the cartridges are replaced every six months or so. Many people notice softer skin and hair within a few weeks. Of every single change I teach, it is one of the most immediately noticeable.

A word on bottled water. Bottled water is not automatically better than filtered tap water. Many brands are simply municipal tap water, minimally treated and packaged in plastic, with a mountain on the label and a city pipe behind it. The plastic itself leaches chemicals (phthalates, bisphenols, microplastics) into the water, especially when the bottle has been left in the heat, like a case baking in a hot car. If you buy water, spring water in glass is best. The everyday answer is filtered water from home, carried in stainless steel or glass.

Choosing a Filter

Before you buy a filter, it helps to know what you are filtering for. Each kind does some things well and misses others; no single gadget on the store shelf does it all.

Filter type	What it does well	What it misses
Pitcher or basic carbon filter	Chlorine taste and odor, some by-products	Fluoride, most chloramine, many metals
Carbon block certified for lead and PFAS (NSF/ANSI 53 or 401 on the label)	Lead, many PFAS, by-products	Fluoride
Reverse osmosis (RO)	Fluoride, lead, arsenic, PFAS, most dissolved contaminants	Also removes minerals; add them back
Shower filter (vitamin C or KDF type)	Chlorine (the vitamin C types also chloramine)	Fluoride and most other contaminants
Whole-house system	Chlorine or chloramine at every tap and shower	Usually paired with RO at the kitchen sink

So the one filter that removes fluoride, lead, arsenic and most PFAS together is reverse osmosis. For most families I suggest three layers, as the budget allows:

Filter your drinking water, ideally with reverse osmosis at the kitchen sink. If your water has no fluoride but you live in an old building, a carbon block certified for lead and PFAS is a large step up from a basic pitcher.
Filter your shower water with a chlorine-reducing shower filter (a vitamin C type if your city uses chloramine).
Consider a whole-house system if the budget allows. It costs several hundred to several thousand dollars, depending on the house, and it means every glass, every shower, every dish and every load of laundry uses filtered water. One filter, no exceptions.

Add the minerals back. Reverse-osmosis water has lost its minerals along with its contaminants; it threw out the good with the bad. Add a pinch of unrefined sea salt or a few drops of trace minerals to the water you drink, or choose a system that remineralizes at the end. And whatever filter you choose, change the cartridges on the maker’s schedule; a neglected filter stops working, and then it is just a very expensive piece of plumbing.

Look up your water. Your water utility publishes an annual Consumer Confidence Report, and the Environmental Working Group’s Tap Water Database lists what has been found in your local supply. Both make more interesting reading than the name suggests. If your family is on a private well, have it tested, because no one else will.

Plastics and the Hormone Disruptors

Now we open the kitchen cupboards. Mind the avalanche of plastic lids.

A large group of household chemicals are called endocrine disruptors: chemicals that mimic, block or alter the body’s hormones. Hormones work in tiny amounts, so even small exposures can matter, especially during pregnancy and early childhood. When the message is a whisper, a little static goes a long way. The two best known are these.

Bisphenol A (BPA) mimics estrogen. It is used in hard polycarbonate plastics, in the linings of many food and drink cans, and in the thermal paper of many store receipts. “BPA-free” products often use close cousins such as BPS, which studies suggest act in similar ways. Same family, new name tag. So “BPA-free” is not the same as “safe.”
Phthalates make plastics soft and help fragrances last. They are found in vinyl (PVC) products, in food packaging and processing equipment, and in anything that contains “fragrance.” Some phthalates block testosterone.

Dr. Shanna Swan’s research. Dr. Swan is a reproductive epidemiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the author of Count Down (2021). Her team’s 2017 analysis in Human Reproduction Update found that sperm counts among men in North America, Europe and Australia fell by more than 50 percent between 1973 and 2011. A 2022 update found the decline continuing, and accelerating, worldwide. Dr. Swan links the decline in part to endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as phthalates and BPA, especially phthalate exposure in pregnancy, which in her studies was associated with changes in the genital development of baby boys.

As a mother of seven, I find this research hard to read. It is also one of the strongest reasons I know to clear the plastics out of a young family’s kitchen.

Microplastics. Plastics break down into tiny particles that now turn up everywhere: in water, food, air and human tissue. A 2024 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found microplastics in the artery plaque of more than half of patients having surgery to clear a neck artery, and those patients had a higher risk of heart attack, stroke or death over the next three years.

Heat speeds it up. Chemicals move from plastic into food fastest with heat, fat and time, which happens to describe most leftovers. So:

Do not microwave food in plastic. Reheat in glass or on the stove.
Do not drink hot drinks from plastic cups or through plastic lids if you can help it. Your coffee deserves better company.
Do not wrap fatty foods (cheese, meat) in plastic film.
Store food in glass or stainless steel.
Eat fewer canned foods, and favor fresh or frozen.
Decline the paper receipt when you can. The cashier will survive.

Glass and stainless steel are the answer in nearly every case. Boring, durable, and blessedly quiet about your hormones.

PFAS: The Forever Chemicals

The story of PFAS is one of the most disturbing chapters in modern industrial chemistry, and it deserves to be told. Pour yourself a glass of filtered water first.

PFAS is an abbreviation for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a family of thousands of man-made chemicals built on chains of carbon and fluorine. The carbon–fluorine bond is the strongest bond in organic chemistry. It does not break down in the environment, and it does not break down in the body. That is why PFAS are called forever chemicals. Diamonds get the marketing; PFAS get the staying power.

The story. The first major PFAS was PFOA, also known by its industrial name C8. It was developed by 3M and used from the 1950s by DuPont to make Teflon, the nonstick coating that became one of the most popular consumer products of the postwar era. Eggs slid right off; so, it turned out, did responsibility. A close cousin, PFOS, was the key to 3M’s Scotchgard fabric protector. PFAS-based products then spread through the consumer economy: nonstick cookware, stain-resistant carpets, water-resistant outerwear, food packaging, firefighting foam used at airports and military bases, cosmetics, dental floss. The list runs to thousands of products.

What the public did not know, but what the companies’ internal documents later revealed, is that the companies had evidence of harm in laboratory animals, and of PFAS building up in workers’ blood, decades before the public knew. Decades. PFOA had also spread into the drinking water of communities downstream of the plants.

Lawyer Robert Bilott took the case of the families living near DuPont’s West Virginia plant. His case led to the creation of a C8 Science Panel, which found probable links between PFOA and kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure in pregnancy. Other research has added liver damage, immune suppression and lower birth weight to the list. The story is told in the documentary The Devil We Know (2018) and the film Dark Waters (2019), and in Bilott’s own book, Exposure. The settlements that followed cost the companies billions of dollars, which, as it happens, is still less than forever.

PFOS and PFOA were phased out of U.S. production between 2002 and 2015, but some of the replacements, such as GenX, appear to act in similar ways. The shell game continues: new cup, same pea.

When you watch the story, notice how long the companies’ internal studies came before any public warning. Then remember the “follow the money” test from Chapter 1: who profited, for those decades, from the chemicals being called safe? (Hint: not the families downstream.)

Where things stand now. PFAS are found in the blood of nearly every American who has been tested. They are in the food, in the water, and in the dust of nearly every home. PFOA takes its time leaving the body; its half-life is roughly three to four years. So even a family that stopped all exposure tomorrow would clear what it carries only slowly, over a decade or more. That is why the work for PFAS is mostly about stopping further exposure. When you cannot bail fast, stop the leak.

The new limits. In 2024 the EPA set the first national drinking-water limits for PFAS, including 4 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS. In 2025 the agency said it would keep those two limits but give water systems until 2031 to meet them, and drop the limits it had set on four other PFAS. Progress, at the speed of paperwork.

The household sources of PFAS:

Nonstick cookware, especially when it is scratched or overheated. The fumes from an overheated nonstick pan can kill pet birds. If that is what the fumes do to a bird, I do not want them in my kitchen. The canary in the coal mine has moved in next to the stove.
Stain- and water-repellent treatments on carpets, furniture and outdoor clothing.
Grease-resistant food packaging: fast-food wrappers, microwave popcorn bags, pizza boxes and some takeout containers. Convenience, with a forever side order.
Some dental floss, which uses PFAS for its slippery glide.
Some long-wear and waterproof cosmetics: long-wear lipsticks, foundations and waterproof mascara. “Long-wear” takes on a whole new meaning.
Contaminated drinking water, especially near military bases, airports and factories that used firefighting foam.

Reducing PFAS. The reduction is simple in principle and takes attention to many small details. Think of it as a scavenger hunt in reverse.

Replace nonstick cookware with cast iron, stainless steel, glass or well-seasoned carbon steel. It does not have to happen all at once; replace each pan as it wears out, and every replacement lowers the daily dose. A good cast iron pan will likely outlive the argument.
Filter for PFAS. A carbon block filter certified for PFAS, or reverse osmosis, is the answer. The Environmental Working Group’s Tap Water Database will tell you whether your supply has been tested for PFAS and what was found.
Choose natural fibers without stain-resistant or water-repellent treatments. The brief experience of getting wet in the rain is preferable to a lifetime of PFAS from a treated jacket. You dry off; forever chemicals do not.
Eat less food that comes in grease-resistant packaging. Pop popcorn on the stove, the way it popped before it needed a special bag.
Choose PFAS-free dental floss and cosmetics from companies that have committed to PFAS-free formulas.

What Goes on the Skin

The bathroom cabinet deserves its own word. Possibly several.

The Environmental Working Group has estimated that the average woman uses about 12 personal care products a day, containing well over 100 different ingredients. That is a chemistry set before breakfast. Men use fewer, but still many. What goes on the skin can be absorbed. Women in particular put more products on more of their skin than men generally do, which is why, for many of my women students, the bathroom cabinet is the place to begin. And U.S. law gives the FDA little power to require safety testing of cosmetics before they are sold.

These are the ingredients I teach my students to look for, magnifying glass optional:

“Fragrance” or “parfum.” This single word on a label can hide dozens of undisclosed chemicals, often including phthalates. It is the most crowded single word in the store. It is the first word I look for.
Parabens, preservatives that mimic estrogen weakly.
Triclosan, an antibacterial chemical the FDA removed from antibacterial hand soaps in 2016, though it lingers in some other products, like a guest who missed the hint.
Aluminum in antiperspirants, which matters all the more given the fluoride and aluminum pairing I described in Chapter 2. An aluminum-free deodorant is an easy swap.
Some chemical sunscreen filters, such as oxybenzone. FDA studies published in JAMA in 2019 and 2020 found several of them absorbed into the blood above the level at which the FDA says safety testing is needed. Mineral sunscreens (zinc oxide and titanium dioxide) are the usual alternative, alongside sensible sun habits like shade and a good hat. Switching to a mineral sunscreen is not a reason to skip sun protection when you are likely to burn.
Menstrual products. A 2024 study from the University of California, Berkeley found measurable metals, including lead and arsenic, in tampons from several brands. Organic cotton products, menstrual cups and period underwear (checked for PFAS) are the options.

Look, too, at the long-wear cosmetics and the dental floss for PFAS, as I described above.

The Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database lets you look up a product or an ingredient. But you do not need a database to begin. The simplest rule I know: fewer products, with shorter ingredient lists you can recognize. If the ingredients are foods or plants you know, so much the better. And there is no need to throw everything out in a day. Replace each product with a cleaner one as it runs out. Your bathroom does not need a raid, only a slow changing of the guard.

Conscious Cleaning

Now we open the cabinet under the sink. Hold your breath; I will explain why in a moment.

The conventional household cleaners are some of the most toxic products in the typical home, and they are released into the air every time they are used. Many of them give off volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and fragrances, and some irritate the lungs. “Fresh scent” is often just a chemical with good public relations.

A few rules are not negotiable:

Never mix bleach with ammonia, with rubbing alcohol, or with vinegar or other acids. The fumes are dangerous, and they can be deadly.
Never mix vinegar and hydrogen peroxide in the same container either.

At Arukah we call the alternative conscious cleaning. Most homes can be kept clean with a few simple things, most of which your great-grandmother would recognize:

white vinegar,
baking soda,
castile soap,
hydrogen peroxide,
microfiber cloths,
and, if you like, a small number of essential oils.

And clean does not have to mean disinfected. There is some evidence, called the hygiene hypothesis, that children raised in overly sterile homes develop more allergies. A kitchen counter washed with soap and water is clean. It does not need to be sterile; it is a counter, not an operating table.

Do not forget the laundry room. Fragranced detergents and dryer sheets put the same undisclosed “fragrance” chemicals on every piece of clothing and bedding the family wears and sleeps in, right against the skin, all night long. Fragrance-free laundry products are one of the easiest changes in the house. Clean laundry should smell like nothing at all.

The Air Inside the House

I told you at the start of this chapter that the air inside the average home is two to five times more polluted than the air outside. Here is where that pollution comes from, room by room:

Gas stoves, which release nitrogen dioxide and other combustion gases. A 2022 study estimated that about 1 in 8 cases of childhood asthma in the United States could be attributed to gas stove use.
Air fresheners, plug-ins, scented candles and incense, all sources of VOCs and other emissions. They do not freshen the air so much as add to it.
Off-gassing from new furniture, mattresses, carpets, paint and flooring, and flame retardants from foam that collect in household dust. That new-couch smell is not a feature.
Cleaning products and personal care products used in the home.
Mold, from any damp place that has not been dried or ventilated. Mold is one of the most overlooked contributors to chronic illness in the modern home, and it has its own chapter (Chapter 4).

The practical instructions for air are simpler than for water, and they cost less. Some of them cost nothing at all.

Open your windows. Open them for cross-ventilation every day, even briefly in winter. Even ten minutes a day makes a measurable difference. The brief drop in temperature is worth the fresh air, and a sweater is cheaper than a purifier.

Use the range hood, or switch the stove. Gas stoves should be used with the range hood every time you cook, and the hood should vent to the outside, not just back into the kitchen. A hood that blows the fumes back in your face is a fan with ambitions. If you replace the stove, electric or induction are the choices.

Run a HEPA air purifier in the bedroom. The bedroom is where you spend the largest single block of time in the house, so it is where a purifier does the most work. Let it work the night shift while you sleep, and replace the filters on schedule. Choose a true HEPA purifier, not an “ozone generator,” which adds a lung irritant to the air. That is not cleaning the air; that is redecorating it.

Remove the dust. Vacuum with a HEPA vacuum and dust with a damp cloth, to remove the chemical-laden dust instead of stirring it into the air. A feather duster mostly gives the dust a ride to the other side of the room.

Take your shoes off at the door. Whatever was on the sidewalk can stay on the sidewalk.

Let new furniture air out before it comes inside, in a garage or on a porch if you can. Let it do its off-gassing outdoors.

Stop burning fragranced candles, plug-in air fresheners and synthetic perfumes in the house. If you want a pleasant scent, use beeswax candles, a diffuser with high-quality essential oils, or fresh-cut flowers. Better still, open a window. The outdoors has been perfecting that scent for a long time.

Fit a carbon monoxide alarm. Any home with a gas stove, a furnace or a fireplace needs a working one, with batteries that are actually in it.

Watch for moisture. Fix leaks, and ventilate the bathroom and basement. Where there is moisture, there will be mold (Chapter 4). Mold never needs a second invitation.

When the Regulators Disagree

Your friends and family will raise the other side, usually at the dinner table, and they deserve a fair answer.

The conventional view. U.S. regulators generally say that the amounts of BPA, phthalates and most cosmetic ingredients people are exposed to are below levels of concern. They also say that chlorinated water is far safer than untreated water, which is true.

But regulators do not always agree with one another. In 2023 the European Food Safety Authority lowered its tolerable daily intake for BPA by about 20,000 times, while the U.S. FDA has kept its position that current exposures are safe. That is not a rounding error. The European Union restricts far more cosmetic ingredients than the United States does.

So when someone tells you that a pan or a shampoo must be safe because it is sold in every store, here is how I answer. Many chemicals were approved before their long-term effects were studied, and U.S. law requires little safety testing of cosmetics. A store shelf is a sales decision, not a safety certificate. PFAS are the clearest example: the companies had evidence of harm decades before the public knew, and now these chemicals are in nearly everyone’s blood. And the regulators of different countries look at the same chemical and reach answers 20,000 times apart. “Allowed” does not always mean “tested.”

You do not need to be afraid of every product. Avoiding most of these exposures is simple and inexpensive. A cast iron pan and a fragrance-free shampoo are not hard to find, and neither one requires a chemistry degree.

The Whole-Home Audit

Here is the practical audit I want you to take through your own house, room by room. No family needs to fix everything at once. The point is not perfection. The point is an honest map of where your household’s load is coming from, so you can choose the changes that remove the most exposure for the least cost and effort. Think detective, not drill sergeant.

Area	What to check
Water	Source of the water and its test report (Consumer Confidence Report or EWG database); drinking-water filter type; shower filter; private well tested?
Kitchen	Nonstick or aluminum cookware, or pans with damaged surfaces; plastic storage and wraps; microwaving in plastic; canned foods; gas stove, and is the hood used and vented outside?
Food packaging	How often fast food, microwave popcorn, takeout containers
Bathroom	Fragrance, parabens, triclosan, aluminum; sunscreen type; menstrual products; dental floss; long-wear cosmetics
Under the sink	Bleach, ammonia, harsh fumes, aerosol sprays, long lists of unfamiliar ingredients
Air	Windows opened? HEPA purifier in the bedroom? Air fresheners, plug-ins, candles, incense? Carbon monoxide alarm?
Furnishings	Stain-resistant carpets and furniture, flame-retardant foam, new mattresses, vinyl
Laundry	Fragranced detergents and dryer sheets
Dental	Silver (amalgam) fillings (see Chapter 4)
Moisture	Leaks, musty smells, discoloration, past water damage (see Chapter 4)
Wireless	Where the router and phones are at night (see Chapter 9)

A few questions to ask as you go, clipboard optional:

Water. Where does the water come from? Is it filtered, and with what? Is there reverse osmosis, or only carbon? Does the report show fluoride, chlorine by-products, lead or PFAS?
Kitchen. Look in the cabinet. Any nonstick (Teflon or similar) pans? Any aluminum pots? Is food stored in plastic? Is plastic going into the microwave?
Bathroom. Read the labels on the deodorant, the toothpaste, the shampoo, the soap, the lotion and the cosmetics. Are there ingredients you cannot pronounce or identify? Are there ingredients you now recognize as concerning: aluminum, fluoride, parabens, phthalates, fragrance? (Look at you, reading labels like a pro.)
Under the sink. Are there products with strong fumes? Bleach and ammonia stored side by side, like two troublemakers who should never share a desk?
Furnishings. Are there carpets with stain-resistant treatments, foam furniture treated with flame retardants, mattresses that smelled of chemicals when new?

What to do first. For most families the first changes are the same:

A drinking-water filter suited to their water (reverse osmosis if there is fluoride; at least a carbon block certified for lead and PFAS).
A shower filter.
Replacing nonstick pans as they wear out with cast iron, stainless steel or glass.
Glass food storage, and no more plastic in the microwave.
Fragrance-free laundry and cleaning products.

Then the bathroom cabinet, one product at a time, as each one runs out. No fire sale required.

Do not try to do everything at once. The reader who finishes this chapter and feels overwhelmed is not unusual; most of my students feel that way the first time they see the whole picture. So pick the one item that, in your honest assessment, is the largest single source of exposure in your life right now. For most of my students it is the water, because water is taken in such large daily amounts. For some it is the cookware, which touches every meal. For many women it is the bathroom cabinet. Pick one. Fix that one. Then pick the next. Nobody renovates a whole house in a weekend, and nobody detoxes one that way either.

A family that fixes one significant source a month will, after a year, have addressed twelve. The total body burden, which has been climbing for most of their lives, will begin to bend in the other direction, and the body, given the chance, will begin to do what it has always been able to do. Every home has some of these sources. We are after progress, not perfection, and there is no shame in where you start. The only wrong starting point is never.

The candle is in your hand. Some of what it finds in the house, the metals in the pipes and the fillings and the mold in the walls, needs a chapter of its own. That is the next chapter.

Footnotes and sources for this chapter

Sources and Further Reading

On the home and indoor air

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Indoor Air Quality program materials.
The Environmental Working Group. Healthy Living: Home Guide, the Tap Water Database and the Skin Deep cosmetics database.

On chlorine and disinfection by-products

U.S. Council on Environmental Quality. Environmental Quality: The Annual Report of the Council on Environmental Quality, 1977.
Villanueva, C. M., et al. “Total and Specific Fluid Consumption as Determinants of Bladder Cancer Risk.” International Journal of Cancer 118, no. 8 (2006): 2040–2047.

On plastics and hormone disruptors

Swan, S. H. Count Down. 2021.
Dr. Shanna Swan’s team. Analysis of sperm count trends, 1973–2011, Human Reproduction Update, 2017, and the 2022 update.
The 2024 New England Journal of Medicine study of microplastics in carotid artery plaque.
Dr. Shanna Swan with Dr. Andrew Huberman: “How to Reduce Chemical Exposure in Your House” and “How to Avoid Plastic, BPA and Chemicals” (video clips).
European Food Safety Authority. Re-evaluation of bisphenol A, 2023.

On PFAS

Bilott, R. Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle Against DuPont. Atria Books, 2019.
Rich, N. “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare.” New York Times Magazine, January 6, 2016.
The Devil We Know (documentary, 2018), directed by Stephanie Soechtig.
Dark Waters (film, 2019), directed by Todd Haynes.
The Biggest Chemical Coverup in History (Veritasium, video).
The C8 Science Panel findings on PFOA.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. National drinking-water limits for PFAS, 2024, and the 2025 revision.
The Environmental Working Group’s PFAS resources.

On personal care products

FDA studies of sunscreen absorption, JAMA, 2019 and 2020.
University of California, Berkeley. Study of metals in tampons, 2024.

The Toxic Home