The clearance bench
The Toxin Nobody Can Name
A juice, tea or foot pad promises to flush unnamed "toxins". In 2009, Voice of Young Science investigated 15 marketed products. No company contacted supplied evidence for its claims or a comprehensive definition of detox. Here is a harder test: name the substance, name the route out, and watch the number move.
Try to rush the line
Ethanol gives the claim a measurable target. During the declining phase above about 0.02 g/dL, saturated alcohol dehydrogenase makes a straight-line approximation useful. The population-average slope is about 0.015 g/dL each hour. It is not your personal rate.
Shaded band: 0.010 to 0.020 g/dL/h, the fasted-to-fed ranges summarized by Jones. The axis is a model, not a countdown to safety.
0.080 divided by 0.015 equals 5.33 hours. No ritual selected.
The regime where detox is real
Real toxicology does not use "toxin" as a floating noun. Pick a substance and a clinical intervention. The bench accepts a match only when the target and mechanism agree.
No match. A juice cleanse names no mechanism for methanol.
Fomepizole is the important correction: it does not pull methanol out. It competitively inhibits alcohol dehydrogenase, preventing conversion to formate. Hemodialysis may remove methanol in severe poisoning. Chelators bind lead into complexes that can be excreted. Activated charcoal adsorbs some swallowed poisons in the gut, works best early, and is not a home remedy.
Less alcohol, fewer ultra-processed foods, a calorie deficit, or laxative water loss can change how someone feels or what a scale reads.
Those changes do not demonstrate removal of a named harmful substance by the marketed cleanse.
The check
hours = 0.080 g/dL / 0.015 g/dL/h = 5.33 h
- The page recomputes the average line and both bounds from the slider. Every popular ritual has a multiplier of exactly 1, so none alters the calculation.
- The 0.015 average, 0.010 to 0.020 fasted-to-fed ranges, and 0.025 to 0.035 range reported in alcohol-dependent people during detoxification come from Jones's 2010 evidence review.
- Free choice: starting BAC. Uncertainty: individual elimination differs with physiology, drinking history, food and measurement. Zero-order behavior is an approximation for the declining phase, generally above 0.02 g/dL.
- The medical matcher verifies categorical toxin-mechanism pairs. It predicts no dose, treatment or patient outcome.
Sources and limits
- Jones, Forensic Science International (2010): population-average 15 mg/100 mL/h, fasted 10 to 15, non-fasted 15 to 20, and alcohol-dependent detoxification 25 to 35.
- Jones and Andersson (1984): experimental comparison of zero-order and first-order descriptions.
- NIAAA, Hangovers: only time clears the metabolic aftermath; coffee and showers do not cure it.
- Voice of Young Science, The Detox Dossier (2009): 15 marketed products investigated; no comprehensive definition and little or no evidence.
- FDA Antizol label: fomepizole competitively inhibits alcohol dehydrogenase in methanol and ethylene-glycol poisoning.
- ATSDR lead guidance and Poison Control charcoal guidance: these are selected clinical tools, not general cleanses or do-it-yourself treatments.
The dossier did not establish that every detox brand ever sold fails to name a toxin. Its result applies to the 15 products investigated. No controlled trial was found showing that the six rituals on this bench accelerate ethanol elimination; the bench therefore models the established elimination relation and NIAAA's warning, not six invented effect estimates.