Elle Celinski’s 7-year-old daughter got a bright-pink stuffed animal from her uncle for Christmas. It was a sweet gesture, said Celinski, who lives in Marin. But within hours of bringing the toy home, Celinski’s two air monitors spiked, registering high levels of volatile organic compounds — airborne chemicals emitted when plastic products fresh off the factory line begin to break down or “off gas.” Suspecting the toy was the culprit, she removed it from the house.
After opening some doors and windows, the monitors registered the air quality as normal. But Celinski was shaken. “It’s shocking that a toy meant for kids could emit harmful chemicals,” she said. “We got rid of the plushie. I wasn’t willing to risk my daughter’s health over it.”
As cofounder of Our Mindful Home, a startup that helps people detox from microplastics and other chemicals, Celinski is primed to pay attention to invisible intruders. “Most parents don’t realize the impact toys, furniture, and even clothing can have on air quality until it’s measured,” she said.
Over the past year, microplastics — particles less than 5mm in size — have become the bogeymen of the wellness world. When many plastic products degrade due to use, friction, or wear, they release airborne particulates that can damage health. Plastic production has doubled since 2008, and a growing body of research has linked microplastic exposure to inflammation, hormone disruption, and cardiovascular disease.
“Microplastics have been found in human lungs, blood, and even testicles,” said Dr. Tracey J. Woodruff, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences at UCSF and a former scientist for the Environmental Protection Agency, who has published papers about how microplastics affect human health. “They’re entering our air, water, and food supply.”
Recent reports on the dangers of black plastic kitchen utensils and how polypropylene tea bags leach billions of microplastics into every cup have heightened anxiety — not to mention the news this month that scientists have found microplastics in our brains, too.
This has led to a surge of consumer products and services promising to de-plastify your life, including kits from Don’t Die health-cult leader Bryan Johnson; a mail-in urine test kit from Million Marker; PlasticList, a compendium that lists the volume of microplastics in everyday products, founded by ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman; Tap Score, a drinking water test; and Celinski’s Marie Kondo-style detox service, geared specifically to parents of young children.
“Kids, age zero to 5, are uniquely vulnerable — it can really impact their development,” said Amelia Mohn Meyer, an environmental scientist who co-leads the Plastics and Health Working Group at Stanford University.
Woodruff explains that children are more vulnerable to microplastic exposure than adults “because they breathe more per body weight and are more exposed to dust, a home for microplastics.”
Celinski’s interest is personal; in her 30s, she was diagnosed with mast cell activation syndrome, which makes her hypersensitive to environmental chemicals — a whiff of Clorox triggers a migraine. Overhauling her home became survival: swapping plastic Tupperware for glass, nonstick pans for cast iron to eliminate plastic forever chemicals, or PFAS, and the plastic shower curtain for a nontoxic alternative. Even her beloved Berkey water filter had to go, after she learned the EPA classified the silver in it as a pesticide. “I thought we were doing great, “ she said. “You really have to dig into the research.”
This was the driving force behind Our Mindful Home. “You can’t control your office or your kid’s school, but you can control what happens inside your home,” Celinski said.
Celinski met her cofounder, Abbi Adams, a child clinical psychologist and mother of four, at their kids’ school in Marin. They bonded over their passion for wellness and the exhausting reality of keeping up to date on scientific research. “Why isn’t there a ‘home detox’ service, like ‘The Home Edit,’ a TV and book series about decluttering, but for toxins?” mused Celinski.
In a world where the ultra-wealthy can hire pantry interior designers and water sommeliers, or drop millions to be kidnapped (for fun!), this was a clear business opportunity.
“No one was addressing the toxins in everyday household items — there was a gap in education and services,” said Adams. The closest thing the two women could find to what they wanted was the organization Lightwork Home Health, a side hustle of Andy and Alexa Bromberg, an Austin-based couple who work in crypto and tech.
Adams and Celinski soft-launched Our Mindful Home in November, offering $500 detox “edits” for friends of friends. They weren’t sure what the demand would be. They had seven bookings their first week.
“Some clients are health-conscious from the start, while others come to us after facing a health scare,” said Celinski. “Our clients are high-net-worth families, but the health concerns we address apply to everyone.”
The two start each consultation with a 30-minute Zoom call, followed by a two-hour in-home assessment. “We take inventory of everything — from tea bags in the pantry to air-quality monitors and even gym flooring,” said Celinski.
Post-visit, clients receive an itemized room-by-room proposal, covering all recommendations, from ditching scented candles to upgrading air purifiers. In the kitchen, this might cover cleaning products, paper goods, utensils, and blenders — Adams and Celinski suggest three vetted product options per category. “There are so many scammy products in this space,” Celinski said. “We filter through the noise so people don’t get misled.”
“Within brands, some products are clean, while others are not. It’s a ton of greenwashing,” added Adams, referring to companies’ attempts to make their products appear more environmentally conscious than they are.
Getting ‘every possible toxin out’
Interest in eliminating microplastics is growing, as shown in a spike in Google searches for the term since 2023. TikTok is full of people posting about microplastic detoxing, and there are Reddit threads asking how to remove microplastics from our bodies and homes. X is full of tips and tricks about how best to do this, from donating blood to ditching plastic bottled water to sweating out the toxins in saunas.
Some of this is sound advice, according to scientists, and some isn’t. “Switching to glass containers is great,” said Meyer, “but blood draws will not remove microplastics in tissue.” As for saunas, people do excrete minute amounts of plastic through sweating and sneezing, she said, but to remove them at an effective volume, one would need to sauna for more than 23 hours a day. “Saunas are not a solution.”
The only full-proof way to cut down on microplastics is to identify and expunge the likeliest sources. Which is why Celinski and Adams have been steadily busy since their fall launch. Many clients come to them because they are experiencing health situations that might be exacerbated by microplastic. One Marin mom requested a home edit because her 9-year-old was going through early puberty.
“She was shocked to learn [that] endocrine-disrupting chemicals were in everyday items like scented candles, synthetic cleaning products, and even some brands of bamboo toilet paper,” said Celinski. (She recommends Reel bamboo toilet paper as a healthier choice.)
Another client hired them to ensure her home was toxin-free during her husband’s recovery from throat cancer. “She wanted every possible toxin out of their home — even his golf apparel,” said Celinski. For most homes, the total cost of their product recommendations comes to $5,000, but it can go up to $15,000 for bigger projects. For an extra fee, they’ll buy the products for the client, she said.
Sometimes they work alongside an interior designer, as they did for a family that hired them to detox their Malibu home and oversee their Woodside mansion remodel. “The designer was skeptical at first but ended up asking us which nontoxic paints and mattresses we’d recommend for her own clients,” said Celinski. “We’re not here to replace designers — we’re here to ensure the home environment is as healthy as it is beautiful.”
Though home detoxing might help individual households, it will get us nowhere close to solving the microplastic crisis globally, experts say. “We need policies to cap plastic production. Systemic solutions, not just individual efforts, are the answer,” said UCSF’s Woodruff. She would like to see sweeping government policies that set caps on plastic production, which would be more effective than banning microplastics from cosmetics and personal products.
One bright spot in the battle against microplastics came in 2023, when the California State Water Resources Control Board began testing for microplastics in tap water. But big changes need federal backing to succeed. This seems unlikely in the near term, with President Trump scorning most new environmental regulations.
Woodruff cautions that services like Our Mindful Home aren’t a panacea, either, in part because they aren’t approved by a credible regulatory body. “There’s no credentialing program for those services,” she said. “Unfortunately, the burden is on the public and not on the people who make these dangerous products.”
Meyer said the service is “a useful idea,” but also a “way to make money.” There are free resources where consumers can educate themselves, she noted. “In general, people should do an inventory inside of their homes and figure out what to get rid of.”
Woodruff recommends that people aiming to reduce their contact with microplastics check the Green Science Policy Institute, the Center for Environmental Health, and the Environmental Working Group. “You can DIY slowly over time, focusing on key sources of exposure,” she said. She advises heating food in glass containers rather than plastic, which can leach into the contents.
For the founders of Our Mindful Home, the end goal isn’t scaling their business — it’s making it obsolete. “If every product was microplastic free, and no one needed us, I’d be thrilled,” said Celinski.