What is activated charcoal and what is it good for?

What is activated charcoal and is it good for anything? I’m on a quest to find out

Lesson summary

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Coming up today: Activated charcoal. You see it in toothpaste, face wash, cupcakes—cupcakes!—and even textiles. But what is it, and does it make any difference at all? In the second half of the audio lesson I’ll show you how to use the English expression “come across.” And we have a song of the week. Let’s get going.

Activated charcoal: the good, the useless, and the bad

I was wandering the aisles of Walmart the other day when I came across a funny product. It’s a washcloth made with activated charcoal. And it reminded me that before I came to Mexico last year, I kept seeing “activated charcoal” in more and more personal care products: toothpaste, face wash, bars of soap—you can even buy it as a pill or a powder. But this was the first time I had seen it in a fabric. So I decided to investigate.

Activated charcoal—or activated carbon; it’s the same thing—is a form of carbon. It starts as wood, sawdust, or coconut shells. It’s then treated with oxygen and heated to very high temperatures. The result is a fine, dark-gray (almost black) powder called activated charcoal.

The “activation” process does two important things. It strips the carbon of all other molecules—so it’s free of impurities. And second, it makes the molecules porous. Porous means, it has a lot of holes in it. And because it has a lot of holes in it, it has a large surface area.

In fact , just three grams of activated charcoal has the same surface area as a football field. That’s hard for me to get my head around —but it’s true.

The important property of activated charcoal is this: it can bind to toxins in your system. So that means that toxins—things you don’t want—get attached to the activated charcoal. And since your body doesn’t digest activated charcoal, the charcoal—and the toxins attached to it—just pass out of your system…the same way everything else passes out of your system.

One of the most important uses of activated charcoal, then , is as an antidote to poisoning or drug overdoses. It’s most effective in the first few hours after ingesting a harmful substance, and it doesn’t work on everything. (Charcoal doesn’t help with alcohol, for example.) But doctors and emergency medical technicians can use activated charcoal pills and powders to neutralize the negative effects of some poisonous substances.

Because activated charcoal binds to toxins, it can also do some of your kidneys’ work for you. Most people’s kidneys have plenty of capacity and don’t need this extra help. But if you have kidney disease, activated charcoal can help intercept some toxins before they reach your system, relieving your kidneys of some work.

Charcoal can bind to gas, so some people find that taking activated charcoal in power or pill form can help reduce intestinal gas and bloating. Activated charcoal can also be used to filter water, so that you drink fewer impurities in your water. All of this is supported with evidence.

Activated charcoal also has a number of other—how shall I say this?—alternative uses that are not backed up by any type of scientific or medical studies. I’m not saying they’re untrue! I’m only saying they are not proven.

People use activated charcoal face wash and skin treatments to, supposedly, remove toxins in the skin. It’s also available in toothpaste to bind to plaque and other compounds that can stain your teeth. Other products claim it will treat insect bites, prevent hangovers, and clear your skin. But there is no scientific evidence to support these claims.

Why is it in a washcloth? The claim is that bacteria in the cloth won’t grow as fast as it would otherwise, so the washcloth is cleaner and more sanitary. I guess.

And then—you knew this was coming!—there’s Instagram. Cocktails, cupcakes, ice cream—all made with activated charcoal with a distinctive dark gray color—they’re popular on Instagram because they look distinctive. Food is not generally dark gray, so if you make a dark gray cocktail with a bright yellow wedge of lemon, it looks…interesting.

But when I was reading about activated charcoal’s legitimate, scientifically-proven ability to bind to toxins and flush them out of your system, I also started to wonder something else. Does activated charcoal bind to nutrients and flush legitimate healthy nutrients out of your system?

Here we go, a quote straight from the head of a pharmacy program at Ohio State University . He says: “Activated charcoal has very potent binding properties, so it can bind to everything in your stomach. It can bind to vitamins or other good nutrients, and to medications, making those medications less effective.”

There you have it. So the good news is, if you have an activated charcoal washcloth, it’s not going to make your medications less effective. And putting it in a face wash or toothpaste is probably harmless. But before taking it as a supplement or using it in food, I would ask a real doctor and make sure this is a good idea for you.

I expected better from Mexico…

Americans will pay for anything—they will believe any marketing claim. So I was not surprised to see this in the U.S. One company called a charcoal washcloth “magical” without any apparent sense of irony.

But Mexico! I don’t know what it is, but I’m starting to see activated charcoal this, activated charcoal that here in Mexico until, as I said, I saw a washcloth in Walmart and I said…this is too much.

I told JR and he said, I don’t even know what an activated charcoal washcloth would look like. And I said, just picture a normal gray colored washcloth with a much higher price tag attached.