If you’ve followed me for a while, you know there are a LOT of environmental exposures I talk about. But that doesn’t mean I worry about all of them equally—or that I think you should either.
This is the list of the five exposures I’m currently most concerned about for me and my household.
If I were looking at you and your household, your list might look completely different. Where you live, what you eat, the age of your home, where your children spend their time, your occupation, hobbies and dozens of other factors can influence which exposures deserve the most attention.
In fact, making your own list and ranking your biggest concerns can be an incredibly helpful exercise. It can help you figure out which swaps, habits—and even bigger financial investments—are actually worth prioritizing.
So, here are mine right now.
#5 — Pesticide Residues
For most families, food is an important source of pesticide exposure. Depending on where you live, pesticide use around homes, gardens, golf courses, parks, agricultural areas or other heavily treated outdoor spaces can also contribute to exposure.
We buy organic food at home, but we also eat out on weekends and my older kids sometimes eat at school, so pesticide exposure through food is still a reality for us.
We’re also currently renting a home near a golf course, which makes pesticide use in the surrounding environment something I pay attention to.
When possible, we choose restaurants that use organic ingredients—which, thankfully, isn’t terribly difficult where we live in West Los Angeles. At home, we also use high-quality air filtration and take practical steps (shoes off, keeping dust low) to reduce what gets tracked indoors.
But none of these things can eliminate exposure completely.
That’s why pesticides are still #5 on my list.
#4 — Air Pollution
I have excellent air filters in our home, and yet air pollution remains one of my biggest concerns for one simple reason:
I can’t filter the air in my neighborhood—or the air my kids breathe at school, playing sports or simply living their lives.
After experiencing the Palisades fire firsthand, urban wildfire smoke is something I take especially seriously. We were exposed while evacuating, when we returned to see our home after it burned, and during the weeks that followed.
And wildfire smoke doesn’t stay within the boundaries of a fire. It can travel enormous distances and affect communities far from the flames.
One major concern is PM2.5—fine particulate matter small enough to travel deep into the lungs. Exposure to PM2.5 is associated with respiratory and cardiovascular effects, and research has linked particulate pollution with inflammation and increased risk of premature death.
But urban wildfires can present additional concerns because it isn’t only trees and vegetation burning.
Homes, cars, electronics, plastics, furniture and building materials burn too, potentially releasing a complicated mixture of particulate matter, VOCs, metals and other pollutants into the air.
And we’re learning more about what happens after the flames are gone.
Researchers from UCLA, Harvard, UC Davis, UT Austin and other institutions have launched the L.A. Fire HEALTH Study, a long-term effort examining the health consequences of the 2025 Los Angeles fires. Researchers are investigating potential respiratory, cardiovascular, neurological, reproductive and immune effects, as well as cancer risk.
Research following the LA fires has already raised concerns. UCLA and UC Davis researchers have reported airborne hexavalent chromium nanoparticles—a carcinogenic form of chromium—around fire cleanup zones lingering months after a fire.
The long-term study is important precisely because researchers still need to determine what these incredibly complex urban-wildfire exposures mean for our health years down the road. With wildfires and urban wildfires becoming more common and to an extent larger, the affected area is not only the city where the fire takes place but can be hundreds of miles away.
I’m also concerned about what’s happening at the federal level.
In 2024, the EPA strengthened the annual health-based PM2.5 standard from 12 to 9 micrograms per cubic meter. The current EPA has since announced that it is reconsidering that Biden-era standard and pursuing greater flexibility around its implementation.
At a time when air pollution and increasingly consequential wildfire events are already major concerns, moves to reconsider or weaken stricter federal air-pollution protections concern me too.
#3 — PFAS
If you know anything about PFAS, you’ve probably heard them called “forever chemicals.”
That’s because many PFAS are extremely persistent in the environment, and some can remain in the human body for years.
Exposure is also difficult to eliminate completely. PFAS have been found in water, food, soil, dust and a variety of consumer products.
Research has associated exposure to certain PFAS with increased cholesterol, changes in immune response, reproductive and developmental effects, interference with hormones and increased risk of certain cancers.
And then there’s artificial turf.
Artificial turf and its components can contain a variety of chemicals, and PFAS have been detected in many turf-related materials. Playing sports is important for my children and I won’t stop them from doing that, but I do pay attention to the topic because of how much time they spend on it.
My two oldest boys play sports on artificial turf almost daily—and right now our rental home has artificial turf in the backyard too.
Ugh.
I can’t control every PFAS exposure my family encounters. I can’t control the historical PFAS exposure I definitely had growing up (my parents definitely cooked with Teflon pans) What I can do is filter our drinking water appropriately, avoid unnecessary PFAS-treated products and reduce the exposures that are within my control.
And that’s why PFAS remain high on my list.
#2 — Phthalates
Phthalates have been one of my concerns for years.
They are a large group of chemicals used in plastics and many consumer products, and some phthalates can interfere with endocrine function.
Human research has linked exposure to certain phthalates with reproductive and developmental outcomes, which is one reason I’m particularly interested in reducing exposure during childhood and adolescence.
Even with all the knowledge and tools I have to reduce phthalates at home, they are difficult to avoid completely.
Food can be an important exposure source because phthalates can enter food during processing, packaging and handling. That’s particularly frustrating when we eat outside the home because I have much less control over how food was prepared, processed and stored.
Phthalates and other chemicals have also been measured in materials associated with artificial turf, so given how frequently my boys play on turf, it is another potential exposure I keep on my radar.
At home, we’ve eliminated synthetic fragrance, greatly reduced plastic food contact and made many other changes over the years.
But because phthalates remain so widespread—and because I’m particularly concerned about my children’s reproductive and long-term health—they remain #2 on my list.
#1 — Micro + Nanoplastics
There are a few reasons micro- and nanoplastics are currently #1 for me.
First, plastic isn’t one chemical.
Plastics can contain many different polymers, additives and other chemicals, so microplastics aren’t simply exposing us to one substance.
Second: they’re everywhere.
Microplastics have been detected in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and household dust.
That makes exposure incredibly difficult to avoid completely—especially once we leave the controlled environment of our own homes.
And third, the emerging human health research is becoming increasingly difficult for me to ignore.
One study that particularly concerned me came out of Italy and was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2024.
Researchers analyzed plaque removed from the carotid arteries of patients undergoing surgery and found micro- and nanoplastics in many of the samples.
Over approximately 34 months of follow-up, 20% of the patients with micro- and nanoplastics detected in their arterial plaque experienced a heart attack, stroke or death, compared with 7.5% of those without detectable micro- and nanoplastics.
After researchers adjusted for other cardiovascular risk factors, the presence of micro- and nanoplastics in arterial plaque was associated with a significantly higher risk of those outcomes. (note: The participants already had carotid artery disease, so we shouldn’t assume these numbers represent the cardiovascular risk of the general population, just perhaps an inference that the micro/nano plastic present could have made a bad situation worse)
But finding these particles inside human arterial plaque—and then seeing such a strong association with subsequent cardiovascular events—is one of the reasons I think the emerging human research deserves serious attention. Particularly with micro and nano plastics being found in major organs, tissues and fluids (brain, blood, liver, heart, kidneys, testes, semen, placenta, breast milk and even meconium - baby’s first stool). Scientists are currently studying potential inflammatory, reproductive, respiratory, gastrointestinal and other systemic effects of micro- and nanoplastic exposure.
There is still a tremendous amount we don’t know about what lifelong exposure will mean for human health.
But for me, “we don’t know everything yet” doesn’t mean “there’s nothing to worry about.”
We know exposure is widespread.
We know these particles can enter the human body.
We know that many of the hundreds of chemicals that make up plastic can be harmful to our health.
We now have human research associating their presence with important health outcomes.
And plastic pollution is a global problem that isn’t disappearing anytime soon.
That combination—ubiquitous exposure, limited ability to control it, the complex chemistry of plastics and increasingly concerning human health research—is why micro- and nanoplastics currently sit at #1 on my list.
So What DIDN’T Make My Top 5?
This part may surprise you.
There are several environmental exposures I talk about regularly that I’m genuinely not very worried about in my own home right now.
Not because they don’t matter.
Because I’ve spent years reducing them.
Fragrance,
Formaldehyde and VOCs
Flame Retardants
Bisphenols
Lead
(a deeper dive into WHY I am no longer concerned with these is below for my Subscriber Community)
Your Top 5 Might Look Nothing Like Mine
And that’s the whole point of this exercise.
Low-tox living isn’t about making an endless list of every chemical that might harm us and trying to eliminate all of them.
That’s impossible—and completely overwhelming.
Instead, I think one of the most useful things we can do is ask:
Where are MY family’s biggest exposures right now?
Then put our time, energy and money toward the changes that can actually make the biggest difference.
Your Top 5 might include lead because you live in a 1920s house.
It might include formaldehyde because you just finished a renovation.
Maybe fragrance is everywhere in your home right now.
Or perhaps your drinking water makes PFAS your #1 concern.
Your list can also change.
Mine certainly has.
And to me, that’s what realistic low-tox living looks like:
Not perfection. Prioritization.
Making your own Top 5 can help you determine the order of the swaps—and even the larger investments—you should be making for your home and family.
This is something we can all work through on our own. But if you’re overwhelmed or simply aren’t sure where your family should start, I also work with families one-on-one to identify likely exposures and create a realistic plan with detailed recommendations.
If you’d like help creating your family’s Top 5 and figuring out what to prioritize first, reach out to me at 3littleplums@gmail.com.
And I’d love to know:
What exposure do you think would be #1 on your family’s list right now?
For Subscribers
A Deeper Dive: Why and How I am no longer as concerned with these chemicals?!
