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What the Confusion Costs Us

Dr. Meg Christensen is the founder of Interior Medicine, a physician-created resource on non-toxic home products and household exposures. Her layer-by-layer analysis of materials and products draws on her background in medicine, biochemistry, epidemiology, and clinical research.

Published May 2026 | Updated May 2026

This first section is a little different than the rest. It gives you a lay of the land. It starts with some doom and gloom, but ends on a hopeful note.

The Root Cause of the Confusion

In a perfect world, you’re not taking this course. And the answer to, “what does non-toxic mean?” would already be settled. Ideally, it’d be settled by a group of people that we all collectively trust to make sure we’re protected, and that our products are safe. They should be non-toxic by default, so you’re free to spend the time you spend on this question, on something else.

But you are taking this course, probably for two reasons:

First, the chemical industry's interests win out over our safety. There is actually no federal law that keeps harmful chemicals out of consumer products in the US. TSCA, the Toxic Substances Control Act, is the closest thing we have. But, the Act is essentially just a notification system: companies have to tell the EPA before bringing a new chemical to market, but the burden is on the EPA to demonstrate harm, not on the company to prove it’s safe. The chemical industry spent $77 million in 2025 lobbying to weaken TSCA even further than it already is. Now, there are more than 86,000 chemicals registered, and only a small fraction have undergone any sort of testing for human health. That’s important because PFAS, the "forever chemicals" used in stain-resistant upholstery, carpet treatments, and non-stick cookware, are now in the blood of more than 99% of Americans, even though DuPont's own internal research linked them to liver damage and cancer as early as 1961. The EPA finalized drinking water limits for six PFAS in 2024, then rescinded the limits for four of them in 2025. Likewise, formaldehyde, used in everything from particle board to furniture glues, took the EPA more than two decades to formally classify as a carcinogen in 2024, only for the agency to reverse course in December 2025 and propose a "safe threshold" for exposure that aligns with what the chemical industry has been requesting for years. And so on. Even if you personally trust the government to protect us, 85% of Americans don't. A 2025 poll found that most Americans think large corporations, including chemical companies, have too much influence over decisions that affect their health.

The second reason runs deeper: trust in the institutions that are supposed to protect us has been falling for decades. Beyond TSCA, the US is facing a broader collapse of authority that extends across many health and ingredient issues. Here are two graphs showing how Americans' trust in health agencies and food safety has fallen over the last 50 years. (I used food safety because it’s the best long-term data we have on how we feel about chemicals in everyday products — and polls don’t exist for furniture.)

Confidence in the People Running Medicine

Share of Americans with "a great deal" of confidence, 1974–2024

1978Love Canal: a Niagara Falls neighborhood built on a toxic chemical waste dump becomes a federal health emergency, sparking modern awareness of industrial chemicals in homes.

2008BPA congressional hearings bring endocrine disruption in baby bottles into mainstream awareness.

2014Flint water crisis exposes widespread lead contamination from regulatory failure.

2018PFAS contamination from Teflon and stain-resistant coatings reaches mainstream coverage.

Confidence in Federal Food Safety

Share with "great deal" or "fair amount" of confidence, 1999–2024

2007Salmonella in peanut butter and E. coli in spinach trigger the first major drop in confidence.

2020PFAS contamination of food packaging widely recognized; FDA begins phase-out.

2023California becomes the first state to ban specific food additives, including Red Dye 3 (FDA follows nationally in 2025).

Sources: National Opinion Research Center (NORC) General Social Survey, 1974–2024 (2022 and 2024 readings reflect a methodological shift to mixed-mode data collection). Gallup Consumption Habits Poll, 1999–2024.

The Void

That authority collapse leaves us with a void. We no longer collectively trust an institution to evaluate chemicals, set standards, and tell us what is safe. But we still have the questions. Here’s what’s happened as a result:

Then

Most people trusted government and major health institutions. There were always some dissenters and some commentary, but they were a smaller cast.

Now

A vacuum where unified authority used to be. Many advocacy groups, scientists, and influencers attempt to fill the void. An abundance of journalism and conversation about it all.

The void is being filled by thousands of voices doing all kinds of work, some of it honest and some of it not. There are scientists, advocacy organizations, physicians, brands with real third-party certifications, and wellness influencers explaining things carefully. There are also experts being condescending, brands healthwashing, influencers making confident claims they haven't researched, and people selling expensive detox protocols without evidence. None of us know what role AI will play.

What this all adds up to in daily life is a mix. There is doom-scrolling of hand-wringing articles and podcasts about institutional collapse, family fall-outs, and the awkward tension when you find out your friend trusts someone you completely disagree with. But there are also conversations about products and ingredients that weren't happening twenty years ago, friends sharing what they've learned, communities forming around shared concerns, and a generation growing up more thoughtful about what's in their environment.

The void is an everyday navigational problem that millions of us are trying to solve, with care, in real time.

Solutions

We won't stay in this mess forever! History gives us precedent for moments like this, when external authority collapsed, and people had to figure out what to do next. I wanted to see if patterns emerged in the ways we’ve handled this before, as a way to understand where we might be headed. Here are three representative examples: one is ancient, one is recent, and one is personal. Across all of them, two patterns emerge. The first is widespread experimentation, where many groups try many approaches before any one of them sticks. The second is the growth of discernment, the practice of evaluating claims carefully rather than relying on authority alone.

The Roman Empire

I hope someone asks you what you’re thinking about right now, so you can answer, “The Roman Empire.” ;) The Roman Republic (which technically came right before the Empire) collapsed around 2,000 years ago. The leading institutions lost their authority because they hoarded wealth, displaced farmers, relied on enslaved labor, resisted reform, and were generally corrupt. Civil wars and assassinations followed, and over the years it was happening, people openly debated about what to do and how to live in the absence of a stable or fair society. Philosophical schools sprung up — like the Stoics, Epicureans, Skeptics, and Cynics, and these schools became more and more popular as the Empire declined and more people were looking for answers. Each promoted a different way to live well despite external circumstances. Interestingly, Stoicism is still with us today: it’s the basis for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), the most popular form of therapy. CBT teaches you to evaluate your thoughts carefully before reacting to them, which is exactly what Stoic practice started promoting two thousand years ago. Both patterns are visible: many schools competed, and alongside that, discernment grew as people got sharper at evaluating their own thoughts.

The collapse of the Roman Republic giving rise to new ideas isn't the only time this pattern has shown up:

A few moments from the last 2,000 years

Past

1st century BCE

Roman Republic

Republic institutions failed, giving rise to Stoicism as a personal framework for living well in chaos.

220 CE

Han Dynasty

Dynasty collapsed, opening the centuries that produced Buddhism, calligraphy, woodblock printing, and gunpowder.

1346–1353

Black Plague

Church and crown authority faltered, ending serfdom and clearing the way for the Renaissance.

1500s–1600s

Reformation

Catholic authority fractured, driving mass literacy and eventual religious pluralism.

1972–1974

Watergate

Trust in government collapsed, producing major oversight laws and a generation of investigative journalism.

Now

We don't have time to get into all the historical examples, so let's skip ahead to the 1990s and the slow collapse of the encyclopedia.

Wikipedia

For over two hundred years, Encyclopedia Britannica was the trusted reference. If you’re my age or older, you probably remember using it. When home computers and the internet arrived in the 1990s, we suddenly had an opportunity to replace having to go to the library for big, clunky books. Many attempts were made to make a computer-friendly version: Microsoft had a CD-ROM encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Brittanica tried to hang on to their institutional authority and came out with a $995 version that was a total marketing disaster, followed by their website, which was also a short-lived disaster. Other companies tried, too, and then finally, Wikipedia launched. Everyone was extremely skeptical at the time — because how could anonymous strangers writing an encyclopedia together produce something reliable? But, here we are! It is now the largest reference work in human history. We know it isn’t perfect and shouldn’t be used as a primary source for research, meaning it’s subtly taught us quite a bit of discernment — we ask, is this true? by checking edit histories, looking at the citations, and pausing when we see a sentence with "citation needed," knowing that part might not be reliable yet. Both patterns showed up here too: many products tried to fill the gap, and alongside that, discernment grew through the practice of evaluating what we read.

Going to Therapy

If the Roman Empire and Wikipedia examples don't quite do it for you, the pattern still shows up in something almost everyone goes through. At some point, your parents lost their authority over your life. Most people try a bunch of things in the wake of that realization: avoidance, rebelling against them, reading self-help books, long conversations with friends, a spiritual phase, sometimes therapy. Not everyone goes to therapy, and not everyone needs to. But for the people who do, one of the central tools you learn is discernment: the practice of separating your own thoughts from the inherited ones, evaluating whether your parents' beliefs actually serve you, and pausing before you react. Once again, many things are tried, and alongside that, discernment grows.

Where We Go From Here

The collapses that led somewhere better all had two things in common: lots of people tried lots of different things, and what stuck was usually a surprise. Alongside that, the people who lived through them got better at discernment.

Both of those are happening right now. There's regulatory reform, rebuilding trust in institutions, advocacy organizations, independent journalism, citizen science, the various non-toxic blogs and influencers, the doctors and scientists writing in public, the people doing their own product testing at home. Most of those efforts won't be the thing that sticks. One or two might, and we don't know which. It's possible we can't even imagine it yet (have you seen the drawings from 1900 of what people thought 2000 would look like? They're funny, and the internet definitely wasn't foreseen in any of them.)

Whether you’re involved in any of the above or not, something we can all do is get better at discernment and evaluating health and non-toxic claims. We don’t do this by adopting more lists or trusting different people more confidently, but by learning the underlying frameworks well enough that we can read any claim, from any source, and see what's actually being said. That's what the rest of this course is built around.

Before we go on, I want to be clear about what discernment is and isn't. It gets mixed up with two other approaches that sound similar, but lead somewhere very different.

Discernment: What It Is, What It Isn’t

Discernment is the practice of evaluating claims carefully, rather than automatically accepting them on authority, or automatically rejecting them on suspicion. It's how you read a study, ask who funded it, hold uncertainty when the evidence is mixed, and update your view when something new comes in. It works on any claim, from any source. It works on what scientists say, what influencers say, what your sister says, and what's running through your own head.

It's also the only response to the current confusion that gets stronger over time. Lists go out of date. Trusted sources change. New chemicals enter the market. New studies come out. But the skill of evaluating claims carefully is the same skill regardless of which claim is in front of you, and it sharpens with practice.

The reason I want to spend time here is that discernment gets confused with two other approaches that are common in the non-toxic conversation. Neither is what I'm recommending, even though they look almost identical to discernment from the outside.

Discernment is not Wellness Individualism

Wellness individualism is the view that staying safe from harmful exposures is mostly your own job, done through better shopping and careful choices at home. It's reading every label closely, swapping every product thoughtfully, and treating consumer choice as the long-term solution.

The activity itself is fine. Lots of us, including me, do versions of it every day.

The problem is in the framing, when it's positioned as the final answer to our problem, instead of as a meaningful step along the way.

Most chemical exposure issues aren't solvable one shopper at a time. Safer products are often expensive, and inaccessible to many people. And when the work is placed entirely on individuals, pressure on the companies and regulators who could change things at scale potentially eases. Some advocacy groups argue this is the most damaging part, that wellness individualism actually slows down the kind of structural change that would protect everyone.

So, discernment is not a substitute for the collective protection we deserve. It works while that protection is being slowly worked out, and it's the skill that makes each of us a better participant in eventually building the kind of structures that let individuals put their burden down.

Discernment is not Distrust as Method

Distrust as Method is a phrase I’m using to describe the view that institutional sources are inherently suspicious and that the truth is found only in alternative voices, contrarian takes, and online communities outside the mainstream. It treats expert agreement as evidence of corruption, weights a viral post the same as a peer-reviewed study, and reaches for the opposite of the mainstream view by reflex.

This one looks a lot like discernment from the outside. Both involve questioning sources, and both involve being skeptical of confident claims. The difference is what you do with the skepticism. Discernment truly evaluates each claim, including claims from sources you don't usually trust. Distrust as Method has already decided which sources are wrong before evaluating the evidence.

Rejecting one group of sources just moves your trust to a different group, and the question becomes whether the new group does more careful work than the old one. Often, they don't. And ironically, at its worst, distrust as method pushes people deeper into wellness individualism. If you can't trust any institution, the only place left to put the work is on yourself.

Back to Discernment!

Discernment means evaluating your own mind as carefully as you evaluate other people's.

It's hard, and I've fallen into both individualism and distrust myself, usually when I'm tired or frustrated. They're easy traps, and it happens. The point is to notice when you’re there, and to come back.

Here are the three approaches, summarized:

Discernment

What it is

A skill for thinking through any complicated claim. Weighing evidence carefully, separating facts from feelings, sitting with uncertainty when the evidence is mixed.

What it looks like

Reading the study, not just the headline.
Acting reasonably when something seems risky, without deciding it's definitely poison.
Knowing when a question is still open versus when most experts agree it's time to move forward.

What makes it useful

It works right now, while we wait for systems to catch up.
It pairs with anything else you're already doing: advocating for change, supporting groups working on it, or making careful choices at home.
It's a skill that lasts beyond non-toxic claims and helps you think well about everything else.
It is not an endorsement of wellness individualism. It is a way to act wisely while the burden still sits on you.

Wellness Individualism

What it is

The view that staying safe from harmful exposures is mostly your own job, done through better shopping and careful choices at home.

What it looks like

Safer shopping treated as the destination, not as a meaningful step along the way.
Health treated as a personal project, not a shared one.
The bigger systemic problems treated as someone else's job, or no one's.

What it misses

Many exposures cannot be solved one shopper at a time.
Safer products are often expensive and out of reach for many people.
When the work is placed on individuals, pressure on companies and regulators eases. Some advocacy groups argue this lets the institutions that should be acting off the hook.

Distrust as Method

What it is

An approach that treats official sources as suspicious by default and looks for the truth only in alternative voices, contrarian takes, and online communities outside the mainstream.

What it looks like

Treating expert agreement as proof of a cover-up.
Weighting a viral post the same as a peer-reviewed study.
Reaching for the opposite of the mainstream view by reflex.

What it misses

It swaps a distrustful attitude for the harder work of discernment.
It tends to push people deeper into wellness individualism.
Rejecting one group of sources just moves your trust to a different group. The real question is whether the new group does better work.

You made it through the heaviest part of the course! In the next section, we talk about why something can be toxic but not a risk. It'll clear up Prop 65 stickers, what “Group 2B Carcinogen” actually means, and a lot more.

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