How to Detoxify Your Home

Aug 01, 2024

body , health , home

It's largely left to the consumer to work out the safety and suitability of complicated ingredients list on daily-use products
Dr Jenny Goodman takes a tour of your home, offering non-toxic alternatives

We spend 90 per cent of our time indoors, so detoxifying our homes can make a huge difference to our health, and quickly, too. The purpose of this article is to alert you to some of the toxic substances that are lurking in your kitchen cupboards, your bathroom cabinets, your bedroom and your living room, and to suggest safe alternatives to these substances. So, let’s have a look at what these chemicals are, starting with the kitchen.

What’s under the sink?

Cleaning chemicals: these include detergents, disinfectants, washing-up liquid, laundry powders, surface cleaners, all-purpose cleaners (sprays are worse than cream cleaners because you inhale more of them), stain removers, window cleaners, furniture polish, oven cleaners, anti-bacterial sprays, anti-bacterial wipes and more. Please, read some of the ingredients lists – find a magnifying glass if necessary! They are mostly toxic petrochemicals. I would ditch the anti-bacterial wipes and sprays completely, and replace all the other products as follows, if you can:

For washing-up liquid, use a safe brand such as Ecover or Suma’s ‘Eco-leaf’. Same with laundry powder (with which you can, by the way, use about a quarter of the recommended amounts, even with Suma, Ecover, Allavare or Greenscents).

For surface cleaning, you can just use a damp cloth or bicarbonate of soda (sodium bicarbonate), a simple, alkaline white powder (yes, it’s baking powder) which also cleans ovens, grills and fridges.

For furniture, you can use beeswax polish.

What are you cooking your food in?

Aluminium pans can be problematic, because aluminium is a toxic metal, implicated in Alzheimer’s Disease, autism and breast cancer. But surely, the aluminium doesn’t get into the food? Well, that depends on what you cook in it. Boiling an egg or some rice or pasta is fine. But anything acid will leach the metal out of the pan into your food so tomato sauce, rhubarb, apples, pears, plums or anything with lemon juice in should never be cooked in an aluminium pan.

Similarly, silver foil is not silver, it’s aluminium. It’s OK to wrap your sandwiches in, but you don’t want it in contact with anything acid (as above), so if you are cooking meat or fish in the oven and you’ve squeezed lemon juice on it, don’t have foil touching the food.

Non-stick pans are now known to be a real hazard; what makes them non-stick is Teflon or similar substances, which contain PFAs, Per-Fluoro-Alkyl and Poly-Fluoro-Alkyl substances. The PFAs accumulate in all our organs and are linked with cancer, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, thyroid problems, heart disease, liver damage, premature birth and low birth weight. As soon as one of these substances is banned, another pops up, allegedly safer – till it turns out not to be.

Old-fashioned cast-iron pots are very safe but they are heavy, so make sure you get one with two handles, for easier lifting. Glass pans are fine, so are ceramic pans, and if you really want non-stick then there are safe, PFA-free versions now, made by Green Pans or by Green-Life Pans.

With regard to cold food, don’t use clingfilm or any other kind of plastic wrap. This is about a set of toxic hazards called phthalates, which are used to make plastics soft and flexible. They are endocrine disruptors, implicated in cancers of the male and female reproductive system, menstrual disturbances, fertility problems and possibly Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS).

The softer the plastic, the greater the amount of phthalates that get into the food. So, clingfilm is the worst, whereas storing food in a solid Tupperware box in the fridge or freezer is much less of a concern. The lower the temperature and the harder the plastic, the less transfer of toxic plastics to the food, and thence to your body. (This is why you should never drink water from plastic bottles, especially if they are warm. Use glass). You can instead wrap food in old-fashioned paper bags for a packed lunch and at home, keep it in ceramic dishes in the fridge.

Your kitchen tap

What’s coming out of it? Just water, right? Sorry, no. It’s water plus a whole lot of things that shouldn’t be in there. Firstly, chlorine, added by the water companies to remove pathogenic bacteria; toxic to our thyroid glands. Then there are the substances that get into our water unintentionally, and that the water companies have no effective systems for removing. For example, every drug taken by us humans, whether prescribed, over-the-counter or illegal, is excreted in the urine and finds its way into the water table, the rivers, and eventually into our drinking (and bathing) water.

Then there are the antibiotics and other drugs given routinely to (non-organic) farm animals; the animals pee on the fields and the drug residues leach through the soil into the reservoirs and finally into us. Furthermore, herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and pesticides sprayed on the land run off into the water table and also find their way into our water.

Consider investing in a good-quality water filter. It’s worth it!

In the bathroom

Is there any mould? Mould is toxic. Prevention is better than cure; keep windows and doors open, so air can circulate, to minimise dampness and thus discourage growth of mould.

Clean off any visible mould with borax or a paste made at home from baking soda (again!) and water. Mould spores (and house dust mites) can be caught and removed from the air by a HEPA Filter (High Efficiency Particulate Air filter), but you probably want to install this in the bedroom rather than the bathroom, as you spend one third of your life in the bedroom.

Air fresheners: They do not really ‘freshen’ the air, they pollute it with poisons including formaldehyde, naphthalene, para-DiChloroBenzene, toluene, benzene, xylene, styrene, phthalates (again) and more. We inhale these chemicals every time we spray; so do our kids, so do our pets. Many of them are implicated in cancer and endocrine/reproductive disease.

If you still want a nice smell, use essential oils such as lavender, lemongrass, orange flower, jasmine, geranium, bergamot, rose or frankincense. Just put them in a little ceramic burner above a tealight candle, ideally a beeswax candle rather than a standard petrochemical one. But certainly don’t use scented candles – they are full of the same nasties. Ditto the plug-in versions.

Personal care products: Synthetic soap and shampoo can be replaced by natural versions such as those made by Suma, Avalon Organics, Dr Bronner’s or Urtekram. The Soil Association recommend Odylique’s range of shampoos and conditioners, all certified by COSMOS.

Moisturiser, usually full of toxic petrochemicals which are absorbed into the body, can be replaced by safe options like those made by Sukin, Weleda or Green People – or you can just use coconut oil or shea butter. You’ll find you need less moisturiser anyway if you change to natural soap and filter the chlorine out of your water.

When is organic not organic?

If you choose personal care products labelled ‘organic’, you should be safe, right? Not necessarily. It is perfectly legal in the UK to label a ‘beauty’ or ‘wellbeing’ product as organic if it contains only one per cent organic ingredients! Unlike with food, regulation is virtually non-existent. And yet whatever you put on your skin will be absorbed into your body as surely as if you had eaten it. To be sure, look out for the COSMOS label, and also check out the Soil Association’s ‘Health and Beauty’ pages.

Hair dyes are toxic; they have been linked with bladder cancer and breast cancer, but there are a few safer versions, such as pure, natural henna and a brand called ‘It’s Pure’. You don’t want toxic hair dyes touching your scalp, because they’ll be absorbed into your bloodstream. ‘Dip-dyeing’ is ok, though, because then the dye only goes on the ends of your hair, not into your body.

Sunscreen usually contains titanium dioxide and other nasties which get into our bodies through our skin, and some dermatologists fear that it’s actually sunscreen, rather than sunshine, which is causing the rising incidence of skin cancer. Conventional sunscreens can be replaced by those made by Odylique, Sweet Bee Organics or Badger; at time of writing their ingredients lists are all OK. Or just cover up with white cotton clothing.

Deodorants are a minefield. Most contain parabens and aluminium, both of which are toxic. I think if we wash regularly we shouldn’t actually need deodorant; it’s time to re-acclimatise to the smell of fresh, healthy, natural human sweat. It only smells bad if it’s old or if it’s the sweat of fear. And we certainly don’t want anti-perspirants because sweating is one of the body’s ways of detoxing; it makes little sense to prevent that. There are some genuinely organic brands, though; the Soil Association recommend Haoma.

Perfume is another minefield, and not only perfume as such, but ‘parfum’ or ‘fragrance’ as an ingredient of many other products. Modern commercial perfume is not made of flower essences, it’s made of petrochemicals such as benzene, toluene, parabens, phthalates and synthetic musk. Most of these ingredients are known carcinogens – and that’s just those that are displayed on the label – and they are absorbed through our skin straight into the body. The manufacturers are not required by law to disclose every ingredient and the average bottle of perfume contains 14 unlisted ingredients! The solution is just to use natural, organic essential oils, as I detail above. No, they won’t last all day because they are natural, so the body knows how to biodegrade them. Anything that lasts all day is synthetic and worrying.

Menstrual products – pads and tampons – may cause allergic reactions and may contain dioxins, pesticides, bleach (chlorine) and other nasties; it is safest to get a brand made from 100 per cent organic cotton, such as Natracare and also check out the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics: www.safecosmetics.org.

In the bedroom

Mattresses: Most standard mattresses contain all sorts of synthetic chemicals including VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds – this doesn’t mean ‘organic’ in the sense of your nice pesticide-free veg; it’s a chemical term meaning that the molecule contains carbon). These chemicals ‘outgas’ while you are sleeping and include toxins such as chloromethane, acetone, propranolol and toluene. Mattresses also contain toxic flame-retardants such as Poly-Brominated Biphenyls (PBBs). They get into you both by inhalation and via the skin. If your mattress is older than two years, it’s probably finished ‘outgassing’, so don’t panic. But if you are thinking of getting a new mattress, please try to get an organic one. The Natural Mat and Abaca Organic are two reliable companies, and Hypnos organic mattresses are recommended by the Soil Association.

Your wardrobe: Some people use moth balls in their wardrobes or chest of drawers, but these often contain para-DiChloroBenzene, a toxic insecticide. It was the commonest toxin I found when testing sick patients in my practice. You can kill and prevent moths just as easily with lavender oil or a combination of lavender and neem provided in the safe moth spray from Greenfibres of Totnes.

Everywhere else

Take your shoes off when you come in! There’s particulate matter (PM) from car exhaust fumes on the pavement, so it’s on the soles of your shoes. Leave them near the front door; you don’t want that PM pollution on your floors, especially if you have babies crawling around.

Dr Jenny Goodman is the author of Getting Healthy in Toxic Times: An Ecological Doctor’s Prescription for Healing your Body and the Planet