Dhru Purohit Show
The Top 10 Toxins that Are Wreaking Havoc on Your Health and How to Protect You and Your Family from Hidden Toxins in the Home with Dr. Aly Cohen
Wed, 30 Apr 2025
This episode is brought to you by Momentous, Cozy Earth, and Lumebox. Toxins hidden in everyday products can quietly increase our risk of chronic diseases, including cancer. These harmful chemicals aren’t just found in what we put on our skin—they’re also in the air we breathe and the water we drink. Understanding where these toxins hide and how they impact our health empowers us to make smarter choices, reduce our exposure, and protect both our well-being and that of our families. Today’s guest shares how simple, practical switches can help us detoxify our lives and take back control of our health. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Dr. Aly Cohen to unpack some of the most toxic offenders hiding in our everyday lives. Using a tier-ranking system, Dr. Cohen breaks down where everyday household items—like cookware, cleaning products, Tupperware, and candles—rank compared to other major exposures, such as poor air quality and tap water. She also shares her Four A’s Framework—a simple, practical tool to help identify toxins without feeling overwhelmed or paralyzed when making safer choices. Plus, Dr. Cohen offers actionable tips to support the body’s natural detoxification pathways through everyday lifestyle habits, nutrition, and targeted supplements. Dr. Cohen is a board-certified physician specializing in rheumatology and integrative medicine, as well as an environmental health expert based in Princeton, New Jersey. Her new book, DETOXIFY: The Everyday Toxins Harming Your Immune System and How to Defend Against Them, connects the dots between everyday chemical exposures and the rising epidemic of immune and autoimmune disorders and what we can all do about it. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Cohen dive into: Iodine’s role in detoxifying the body (00:40) Ranking toxin exposure from non-stick cookware (4:05) The problem with tap water—and solutions for cleaner options (9:33) The cumulative impact of toxin exposure over time (19:53) How today’s toxin load compares to earlier lifestyles (20:59) Poor indoor air quality and the dangers of dust buildup (22:38) The 4 A’s Framework for reducing toxic exposure (34:37) Why standard household cleaners can be harmful (38:47) Personal care products and their link to autoimmune disorders (44:26) Safer alternatives to traditional dry cleaning (54:17) Why you should avoid microwaving food in plastic—and use glass instead (58:15) Ultra-processed foods as a constant source of toxins (1:06:35) Foods that naturally support the body’s detoxification process (1:11:01) Mercury exposure and the rising pollution in our oceans (1:13:22) Daily supplements and foods that help minimize toxic burden (1:18:05) What drives Dr. Cohen’s passion for environmental health (1:24:11) BPA levels in mothers and the correlation with autism (1:29:07) What truly matters when it comes to reducing toxic exposure (1:37:27) Also mentioned in this episode: Dr. Cohen’s book Detoxify Study on surface cracks on non-stick cookware Try This –The Invisible Threat You Need to Be Aware of Ollie Dog Food For more on Dr. Cohen, follow her on Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and her Website. This episode is brought to you by Momentous, Cozy Earth, and Lumebox. Optimize your energy and mental clarity with the Momentous Three: Protein, Omega-3s, and Creatine made by and used by the best. Head to livemomentous.com and use code DHRU for 35% off your first subscription. Right now, get 40% off sitewide at Cozy Earth. From May 2 through May 4th, Buy One, Get One Free viscose bamboo pajamas!! Just head over to cozyearth.com/dhru and use code DHRUPBOGO. Lumebox is offering my community early access to their 50% off their portable Red Light device Birthday sale. Just go to thelumebox.com/dhru to get your device. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the role of iodine in detoxifying the body?
Dr. Ailey Cohen, welcome to the podcast. Today, you are here to talk about the important role of detoxifying our life. And you're going to help us do that by ranking the worst offenders, the top 10 worst offenders that are toxifying all of us. And more importantly, though, it's a silver lining because there's a lot of things you can do to protect yourself.
You're going to rank the top 10 things that we can do to protect ourselves. So let's jump in if you're okay with that. I'm okay. Let's do it. Let's start off with some good news. And that is iodine. Why is iodine something that you're a fan of? And where would you rank it on our tiered system?
Well, iodine is a pretty important micronutrient, and I would probably rank it pretty, I would give it like a C or a B. B, let's do B. Okay, tell us about it.
Why is it important? What does it do to the body? And why is it so important with detoxification?
Great question. So iodine is something that most people haven't really heard about. And it's a micronutrient that protects the thyroid gland. And it actually is not in a lot of the foods we eat anymore, other than, say, some seafood and some seaweed and maybe yogurt, real yogurt, navy beans. But iodine is something the human body doesn't make on its own. We have to get it from food.
It's critical for brain development in babies. So babies have to get it from breast milk. But other adults and young children have to have thyroid every day because it washes out every day in order to sit in the thyroid and protect it from a lot of the chemicals that we're exposed to, such as perchlorate for one. And that's in a lot of food packaging, especially processed food packaging.
It's also found naturally in some foods such as farm foods. And it's also on food washes. So it's in the food system of cleaning our produce that we may or may not have control over. So because of these outside invaders that like to stick to the thyroid gland and disrupt its function, iodine protects the thyroid gland. So you don't want to take too much. You don't want to take none or too little.
So there's a recommendation I have of about 150 micrograms of iodine as sodium iodide often, even in a multivitamin. It's very protective and very helpful.
For the average person, are they getting natural exposure to their diet? Or are you saying that most people actually might not be getting enough?
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Chapter 2: Why is non-stick cookware considered toxic?
So let's rank the idea of switching out plastic with glass and stainless steel, whether it's your water bottle, whether it's your food containers. Where would you rank that on our list here?
I would say probably, you know, I would say almost like a B. I think that's okay because when I think of how easy the change out is to the benefit, you know, the risk benefit ratio there, it's really a good one. You know, it's very easy.
That's awesome. I love that. On that note here, in the book you talk about BPA-free cans and bottles. Now, I want to ask you, most people have heard about BPA. It's not a great thing. If we can avoid it, awesome. And I've also had a lot of people come on this podcast say that just because something's BPA free doesn't actually mean that it's any better for you.
They might have a bunch of other plastics that are there that have not been named like BPA that could still be a part of it. So is BPA free still something that we should use as a signaling idea that something is safer for us?
Yeah, interesting. BPA is used for a lot of things. It's not even just used in canned foods as the epoxy lining, the plastic interior of all cans, even organic food cans, believe it or not, even baby food cans, right? It is part of the food packaging and BPA itself is part of that.
When it says BPA-free, it's really, as you said, really unlikely that it is truly healthy or safer because there are so many what we call regrettable substitutions to BPA that were designed by the manufacturers of BPA to get around the problems with BPA and the reputation of BPA.
BPA was actually removed from plastic baby bottles and plastic sports bottles in 2012 due to a lot of the work of my co-author for two previous books, who's an emeritus reproductive neurobiologist from University of Missouri. So his work, along with colleagues around the world, was a heavy lift. But they were only able to get it out of baby bottles that are plastic and sports bottles.
But it's everywhere else still, unfortunately. Now, Canada has actually just put forth legislation based on his work and others to get BPA out of packaging, food packaging, because it's such a huge source into the human body. And the substitution bisphenols, BPS, BPSIP, BPF, they are, again, used instead where BPA was used. formally used in many products.
So the long story short is, or the short story short, is stay away from plastics. Don't believe BPA-free really means that much. Try to use glass and stainless steel when it comes to even water bottles and carrying water. And that's a good start, really.
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