What’s Body Burden?

Imagine your skin as the earth. Just as rain, snow, sunlight, pesticides and environmental pollution penetrate the soil, whatever goes on your skin goes through your pores and into your body. In fact, your skin absorbs up to 100% of what you put on it. The toxic load in your body at any given time is called Body Burden, its different for everyone and it changes throughout your life.

It’s not just what goes onto your skin that contributes to your body burden. What you eat, drink, and breathe all contribute to this load as well. While some chemicals break down easily and are dispelled, others persist and accumulate in our tissues, potentially causing problems later in life. Every body is born with an amazing ability to detoxify, but as genius as our bodies are, they can get overwhelmed.

Unfortunately there is no easy way to detect your current Body Burden. Such a test is called Biomonitoring but its not currently available to the public as such. The long term solution is to challenge our government to implement tighter restrictions and do testing for long-term impacts of the more than 80,000 chemicals currently in the marketplace. You can minimize your body burden by increasing your intake of foods high in antioxidants, making sure you’re drinking enough water, choosing products for your body and your home that are free from the most offensive synthetics.

Supporting organizations like Environmental Defence Canada, the David Suzuki Foundation, and The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics in the US will help these organizations to lobby the government for change.