Navigating a Low-Tox Lifestyle: How to Best Avoid Environmental Toxins
What Is A Low-Tox Lifestyle?
A low-tox lifestyle is exactly what it sounds like – living your life in a way that lowers the amount of toxins you’re exposed to. You see, our modern day world is saturated in countless toxins that permeate just about every nook and cranny of our environment. But where exactly are all of these environmental toxins coming from?
Environmental toxins can be natural, man-made, or a combination of both and stem from things like:
Agriculture: Large scale agricultural operations raising crops and animals for human consumption often use copious amounts of chemical concoctions to produce massive quantities of food products
Construction materials and household products: Building materials, furniture, paint, and cleaning products used in buildings and homes often utilize a medley of toxic chemicals
Industrial operations: Like factories, manufacturing plants, and industrial outfits
Natural sources: Like heavy metals, radon gas, mold, and other biotoxins
Transportation: Vehicle emissions from cars, aircrafts,and other modes of transportation
Waste disposal: Our landfills are overflowing with toxic substances that can then leach their way into the surrounding environment.
So if these environmental toxins are everywhere we turn, why bother trying to avoid them? What are the benefits of trying to minimize our exposure to these toxins?
What Are the Benefits of Going Low-Tox?
Prolonged exposure to health-disrupting environmental toxins can slowly chip away at your health – potentially leading to a multitude of diverse and severe health concerns, such as:5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12
Cancer Risk: An astounding 90-95% of cancer cases stem from environmental and lifestyle influences – with the chemicals and toxins present in our daily surroundings triggering cellular changes that can lead to the development of cancerous cells.
Hormonal Disruption: Various toxins possess the ability to imitate the body's natural hormones – effectively deceiving the body into responding as if these toxins were its own hormones. This disruptive mimicry can destabilize hormonal balance, resulting in issues ranging from estrogen dominance to compromised thyroid function.
Metabolic Disarray and Weight Gain: There’s a specific class of environmental toxins known as obesogens which are known culprits in instigating weight gain by distorting metabolism and interfering with normal hormone production. As a result, your body's inclination toward fat storage intensifies – causing your body to hang onto fat and making weight loss an uphill battle.
Autoimmune Challenges: The gradual accumulation of toxins can overwhelm and exhaust the immune system – eventually causing it to malfunction. This dysregulation prompts the immune system to erroneously label the body's own cells as threats and subsequently launch attacks against them – fostering the development of autoimmune disorders.
Fertility Impairment: The worldwide decline in fertility is partly attributed to exposure to environmental toxins. These substances can impair fertility by reducing sperm count in men, disrupting women's menstrual cycles, hindering implantation, and heightening the risk of miscarriage.
Neurological Interference: Environmental toxins can hinder your brain's ability to function optimally – affecting abilities like learning, mood regulation, and overall brain health. In fact, these toxins are speculated to be major contributors to conditions such as intellectual disabilities and progressive neurodegenerative disorders like dementia.
The truth is, these impacts represent only a fraction of the harm that can potentially be inflicted by the buildup of environmental toxins. So the benefits of lowering your exposure to these harmful compounds is exponential. So let’s dive into some ways you can start tackling the toxins in your life.
Low-Tox Living Tips: How to Lower Your Exposure to Environmental Toxins
Before we get into some of the primary sources of exposure to environmental toxins and offer strategies to tackle them, it's important to acknowledge that embarking on these changes might seem like a daunting task. However, even minor adjustments can wield significant benefits over your overall well-being. It’s the tiny, incremental changes that have a compound effect – gradually tipping the scales in your favor by enhancing your health and substantially diminishing the likelihood of developing numerous chronic conditions.
So let’s explore some of the biggest offenders when it comes to environmental toxin exposures and what you can do about them.
Environmental Toxins In Food and Water: Creating A Low-Tox Diet
When it comes to environmental toxins, your diet plays a significant role. Globally, a staggering 5.6 billion pounds of pesticides are utilized annually – with the United States accounting for 1 billion of those pounds.
However, it's not just our soil that's under assault by toxins. Widespread pollution of our oceans, rivers, and lakes has led to contamination in various seafood types, making it challenging to avoid some level of exposure.
Given that the intake of pesticides, heavy metals, microplastics, and other harmful compounds through our food is among the primary sources of exposure, focusing on your diet is a logical starting point for reducing toxins in your life. Here are some effective strategies to achieve this:
Buy Organic Produce
Centering your diet around mostly organic foods can help to dramatically reduce the levels of pesticides in our bodies. Numerous studies have found that even just 1 week of eating a mostly organic diet can reduce circulating levels of pesticides by a whopping 80-90%!
Look for Organic, High-Quality Animal and Dairy Products
You are what you eat – and what you eat, eats. Meaning toxins move their way up the food chain and can accumulate in animals that then end up on your dinner plate. So look for meat, eggs, and dairy that are organic and are raised in the most natural way possible. In addition to organic labeling, it’s always a good idea to also look for animal products that are labeled grass-fed or pasture-raised.
Avoid or Reduce Consumption of the Most Contaminated Seafood
The ocean's food chain is a complex web, with tiny plankton being consumed by small fish, these small fish then consumed by slightly larger ones, and so on and so forth until you reach the ocean's apex predators. As toxins move up this chain, they accumulate along the way – resulting in a potent mix of chemicals and harmful substances in the apex predators.
Certain fish species are particularly affected by this accumulation of toxins and should be avoided to reduce exposure which include:
Tilefish
Swordfish
Shark
King Mackerel
Tuna, another top predator, varies in contamination levels. Larger, older tuna species tend to accumulate more toxins – with Atlantic Bluefin and Bigeye tuna, often used in sushi, containing the highest toxin levels. Yellowfin and Albacore tuna, also known as "chunk lite" and "white meat" tuna, contain moderate toxin levels and should be consumed sparingly. Among tuna species, Skipjack tuna, the smallest, carries the least contamination and is considered the safest choice to consume.
Avoid Farmed Fish
The ocean isn’t the only place that seafood is harvested. Fish that are farmed or raised in captivity can also contain a plethora of toxins, with the most toxic offenders being:
Farmed Salmon: The majority of salmon available in restaurants and grocery stores is farmed Atlantic salmon. Unfortunately, farmed salmon, regardless of its origin, tends to harbor elevated levels of chemicals linked to cancer and hormone disruption.
Imported Shrimp: A significant portion of the shrimp supply is imported from Southeast Asia, where fish farming regulations are often lenient. The practices there involve raising shrimp in unsanitary water conditions and administering antibiotics, pesticides, hormones, and even banned chemicals from other countries.
Tilapia: Virtually all tilapia is produced through farming, similarly to farmed salmon. This farming process exposes tilapia to numerous contaminants like pesticides and antibiotics. Additionally, the diet given to farm-raised tilapia, which typically consists of corn and soy, leads to an imbalanced ratio of inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids to anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids. This skewed ratio significantly diminishes their overall nutritional value.
But the good news is there are still plenty of safe seafood options that don’t contain a concentrated dose of environmental toxins.
Look for Wild Caught Pacific Salmon, MASH Fish, and Domestic Shrimp or Shellfish
Wild-caught salmon boasts notably reduced levels of the contaminants often found in their farmed counterparts. When seeking out healthier seafood options, consider choosing wild-caught varieties such as King (Chinook), Sockeye (Red), Coho (Silver), and Pink (Humpback) salmon. Apart from these, there's a selection of other fish that are low in contamination and contribute to a wholesome diet.
You can easily remember them with the acronym SMASH, which represents the smaller, shorter-lived, and less toxic fish:
Salmon
Mackerel
Anchovies
Sardines
Herring
Furthermore, domestically caught or farmed shrimp within the US can be a viable healthy choice, as can farm-raised shellfish like clams, oysters, and mussels. Interestingly, farmed shellfish tend to have fewer contaminants than their ocean-caught counterparts due to controlled farming environments that minimize contamination. But it's always a good idea to conduct your research and inquire with farms regarding their water testing practices for added assurance.
Environmental Toxins In Cookware and Food Packaging: Creating A Low-Tox Kitchen
Even with a fridge and pantry stocked full of organic, contaminant-free food, your efforts can be in vain if you're preparing and storing your food using toxic cookware and containers. Specific types of cookware might contain chemicals that leach into your food during cooking. Let's delve into what you should steer clear of and what alternatives you should consider:
Worst Cookware Options:
Try to avoid using these toxin-laden cookware options:
Non-stick (also known as “Teflon”): The non-stick coating found in these cookware types contains a multitude of toxins that are released when exposed to medium or high temperatures.
Ceramic non-stick pans: The safety of ceramic non-stick pans is still under limited research, but studies suggest they might not be significantly safer than conventional non-stick varieties after all.
Aluminum: Cooking with aluminum cookware can result in the migration of aluminum into your food during the heating process.
Clay: Clay vessels often come with glazes or coatings that contain heavy metals like lead, which can leach into your food.
Plastic: Although you might not be cooking directly in plastic, heating food in plastic containers in the microwave can lead to the release of plastic particles into your food.
Instead, try swapping out your cookware for some safer, less-toxic products.
Best Cookware Options
Some of the safest, and least toxic cookware options include:
Enameled cast iron
Enameled Steel
Cast iron
Carbon steel
Stainless steel
Glass
While swapping over to these safer cookware options can go a long way, the truth is, in today's world, it’s nearly impossible to avoid one of the most toxic offenders of all – plastic. But fortunately, there are some steps you can take to minimize your exposure to the chemicals found in plastic products.
Guide to Plastics:
The chemicals employed in the production of plastics can readily migrate out of the material and find their way into the food you consume. Despite being virtually tasteless and present in minute quantities, these low-level exposures can add up in a big way. Factors that can exacerbate and heighten the transfer of chemicals from plastics to food include:
Heat
Oil
Acidity
Abrasion
To minimize exposure, try to steer clear of using plastics with hot, oily, or acidic foods, and avoid rough scrubbing or scratching of plastic surfaces. It can also be helpful to be mindful of the type of plastic you’re using.
If you flip over any plastic container and take a peek at the tiny numbers imprinted on the bottom, you can actually learn quite a bit about how safe (or unsafe) that specific plastic is. With a total of 7 numbers to consider, a mnemonic rhyme can help you distinguish the acceptable from the less favorable: "5, 4, and 2 – all the rest are bad for you."
Environmental Toxins Absorbed Through Your Skin: Creating A Low-Tox Beauty Routine
Your skin, your body's largest organ, can absorb the products it comes into contact with – allowing them to sneak into your bloodstream and penetrate your cells. This scenario is particularly concerning given that on an average day, the typical woman utilizes around 12 personal care products, while the average man uses approximately 6.
Taking just a few moments to peruse the labels on your personal care items and sidestepping those harboring harmful ingredients can majorly curb your exposure to environmental toxins. Let’s take a peek at some of the key ingredients to try to avoid.
Key Ingredients to Avoid:
If you browse through the ingredients list on your personal care products, keep an eye out for the following compounds:
Any chemical name ending in “-eth” (eg: myreth, ceteareth, oleth)
Cocamide DEA
DMDM hydantoin
Diazolidinyl urea
Diethanolamine (DEA)
Formaldehyde
Fragrance or Perfume/Parfum
Imidazolidinyl urea
Monoethanolamine (MEA)
Parabens
Phenoxyethanol (mostly if you have sensitive skin)
Polyoxymethylene urea
Quaternium-15
Retinyl palmitate
Sodium Laureth Sulfate
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate
Triclosan
Triethanolamine (TEA)
Fragrance” or “Perfume/Parfum”
You don’t have to entirely avoid every single one of these ingredients (especially if they’re in a product you simply cannot give up). But swapping at least some toxin-filled products for less toxic options can have a huge impact on the amount of toxins flowing into your body. And fortunately, as more and more companies and consumers become aware of the dangers of these environmental toxins, more and more low-tox and non-toxic brands are coming out all the time.
Or if you’re into DIY-in it, there are also some great safe options you can whip up at home with a quick Google search for DIY alternatives to any personal care product you can imagine.
Choosing Safer Sunscreens
Sunscreen is notorious for its heavy load of health-disrupting chemicals. Astonishingly, several sunscreens even harbor compounds that can heighten the risk of skin cancer. Yes, you read that right!
A considerable number of commercial sunscreens are brimming with harmful chemicals intended to absorb UV rays such as:
Avobenzone
Homosalate
Octinoxate
Octisalate
Octocrylene
Oxybenzone
Instead of sunscreens loaded with these toxins, opt for sunscreens that block UV rays rather than absorbing them. Seek out sunscreens that employ Zinc oxide or Titanium dioxide as their active ingredients – these alternatives are not only healthier and safer but also significantly less toxic.
Environmental Toxins In Household Products: Creating A Low-Tox Home
Your home might be bursting at the seams with harmful environmental toxins. Artificial fragrances, toxic chemicals in cleaning products, and the off-gassing of harmful compounds from countless household products are just a few everyday things that can render our homes highly toxic. Here’s what to look out for and what to do instead:
Opt for Safer Fragrances:
Artificial fragrances have become so commonplace that we often overlook their potential impact on our well-being. In reality, nearly all synthetic fragrances harbor a ton of harmful toxins. Just a handful of fragranced items that can be found in most average households, include:
Air fresheners
Scented plug-ins
Scented candles
Household cleaners
Laundry products
Personal care products
To steer clear of synthetic fragrances, avoid products listing "fragrance" or "perfume/parfum" among their ingredients. Beware of "unscented" labels too, as synthetic fragrances might still be added to mask strong chemical odors. Instead, consider embracing products without artificial fragrances or try adding in some high-quality essential oil blends.
Look for Safer Household Cleaning Products:
Avoid household cleaning products that contain the following ingredients:
Fragrance: A protected formula of undisclosed chemicals, often containing phthalates which are known hormone disruptors.
Triclosan: An antibacterial ingredient linked to hormone disruption, particularly of the thyroid.
Glycol Ethers: A class of solvents commonly used in household cleaners.
Ethoxylated ingredients: Chemicals with names ending in -eth, like laureth, ceteareth, Steareth-2.
Any ingredients starting with PEG: As these may be contaminated with the carcinogen 1,4-dioxane.
Methylisothiazolinone: A powerful biocide that is linked to nerve damage.
Bleach: An extremely caustic respiratory irritant.
While there are some excellent non-toxic cleaning brands available, you can also throw together some quick and effective DIY cleaning recipes.
Safer DIY Cleaning Recipes:
If you’re a DIY-er it can be easy, cost-effective, and fun to whip your own DIY cleaning recipes. Here are a few tried-and-true recipes to get you started:
All Purpose Disinfectant: 1 cup filtered water + 3/4 cup white distilled vinegar + 2 teaspoons rubbing alcohol + 8-10 drops essential oils of choice: (thyme, tea tree, lavender, oregano, clove, rosemary). Add to a new clean, unused spray bottle.
Floor Cleaner: 1 cup filtered or distilled water + ½ cup white distilled vinegar + ½ cup rubbing alcohol + 2-3 drops of dish soap (not Castile soap) + 20-30 drops of essential oils of choice (thyme, pine, spruce, lemon, tea tree, clove, rosemary).
Sink & Shower Scrub: Baking soda + liquid soap. Mix until you have a consistency that works for the surface you’re cleaning. Make only as much as you need as it does not keep well. Apply with a sponge and wipe off.
Again, you don’t have to avoid ALL products that might contain less-than-ideal amounts of environmental toxins. But making the switch to incorporating at least SOME low-tox options can have a monumental impact on your health.
Ready to Start Creating Your Own Low-Tox Lifestyle?
Listen, environmental toxins can be so easy to overlook or dismiss. They are invisible, the damage they incite is often cumulative, slow, and hard to pinpoint, and let’s be honest – sometimes toxin-filled products just work really darn well. But these itty-bitty toxins really can have a huge impact on your health. Creating a low-tox lifestyle can have a huge return-on-investment when it comes to your health, happiness, appearance, fertility, and more.
And the best news is, you don’t have to totally overhaul your life or give up things you truly love to reap the benefits of lowering your exposure to these health-disrupting toxins. Just investing the time and energy to make a few simple lifestyle tweaks is all it really takes. And once you make those initial shifts, living a low-tox life is pretty simple and can essentially run on autopilot in the background – meaning you don’t have to constantly be thinking about it or working at it.
Whether you’re trying to get pregnant, trying to heal an underlying imbalance, or simply trying to take your well-being to the next level, creating a low-tox lifestyle can have huge benefits. And if you want to start tackling the toxins in your life without the overwhelm, without feeling guilty about keeping some of the toxins in your life, and without feeling like you have to be afraid of all of the potential toxins you might encounter in the world, you’ve got to grab my free guide Tackling Toxins: 5 Simple, Heavy-Hitting Lifestyle Tweaks You Can Make To Reduce Your Everyday Exposure To Toxins.
I’ll teach you how you can start living a low-tox life on your terms and take the guesswork out of avoiding environmental toxins. And I’ll keep you up to date and empowered with the latest research so you can create a low-tox life that’s effortless and easy.