The Scientific Truth About Toxins

Your body doesn’t need as much help removing them as you might think

Illustration by Carolyn Figel

If you’ve ever read the marketing copy for anything wellness-related, you’ve probably been alerted to the fact that our bodies are full of toxins. Absolutely loaded with them. We’re basically walking toxin containers, continually in need of cleanses, scrubs, masks, soaks, and drinks to expel them from our pores, flush them out of our insides, and break them up wherever they lurk.

That toxins are ever-present—and bad—is made perfectly clear. Less clear, however, is what, exactly, these toxins are.

For the most part, we’re using the word “toxin” all wrong, says Pascal Imbeault, a cellular biologist at the University of Ottawa. “Toxins are substances produced by plants and animals,” he explains. (They’re also produced by our cells; more on that in a bit.) What most people think of as toxins — harmful chemicals that our bodies absorb through our environment or the food we eat — are actually toxicants. “These are called persistent organic pollutants,” Imbeault says, and they include things like fire retardants, pesticides, and chemicals called polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, used in electronics. And unless you live far out in the woods and severely limit your contact with modern society, Imbeault says these compounds are…