By Courtney Value, VMBS Advertising and marketing & Communications
Texas A&M College | Vet Medication & Biomedical Sciences, October 2, 2025 — From microplastics to heavy metals and perpetually chemical substances, individuals are extra conscious than ever of the potential risks lurking in meals, water, and home items. However due to researchers on the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS), the reply to those considerations could also be proper below our ft.
Dr. Timothy Phillips, a professor within the VMBS’ Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, has spent his profession uncovering the manifold makes use of for clay in human, animal, and environmental well being. His analysis has led to the invention of a variety of clay-based therapies utilized in preventative medication and for mitigating publicity to toxins and pollution throughout disasters, outbreaks, and emergencies. Whereas some therapies are utilized to the pores and skin to forestall the absorption of poisonous chemical substances, others are supposed to be eaten, the place they stop absorption of chemical substances internally.
Clays could seem to be an uncommon reply in a world of high-tech options, however they’ve a protracted historical past of offering well being advantages due to their standing as sorbents — supplies with adhesive properties.
“One of many causes I initially started my analysis on clay-based therapies was the truth that animals and people traditionally have used clay to assist with quite a lot of illnesses and dietary wants,” Phillips stated. “Even way back to pre-Roman occasions, folks used clays combined with plant and animal fat and beeswax to create capsules. It was historical medication.”
Digging Into Toxin Analysis
Phillips started his profession finding out clay-based therapies for aflatoxins, a gaggle of poisons produced by fungi that incessantly happen in moldy grains, together with animal feed. Animals that eat the grain can develop bleeding within the digestive tract, swollen bile ducts, fatty liver, and cell loss. Typically, the situation ends in loss of life.
“Aflatoxins are often present in low ranges within the weight loss plan — most of us have in all probability been uncovered to them as a result of they’re frequent in meals like peanuts and corn and might happen at greater ranges during times of drought,” Phillips stated. “However they’re most harmful to the very younger, the aged, and different weak people.”
On the time, there was no therapy for aflatoxins.
“I started finding out clays to see if they might present an answer,” Phillips stated. “I found that one explicit group of clays does an excellent job of binding to aflatoxins. The clay has a chemical construction much like a deck of playing cards and after they open up, they kind interlayer pores that draw within the aflatoxins like a sponge.
“When consumed by folks or animals, the clay binds tightly to toxins, maintaining them from being absorbed by the physique,” he stated. “Then, the toxin and clay complicated leaves by means of bodily waste.”
Because of Phillips’ work, dozens of clay-based remedies for aflatoxins are actually out there in business merchandise for animals and other people prone to excessive publicity.
“I’ve been capable of work with communities in Africa and different components of the world the place human aflatoxin poisoning is frequent attributable to their weight loss plan,” Phillips stated. “My lab has discovered that these clays are steady sufficient to be used in cooking so that individuals in these communities can add them on to their meals, as a substitute of taking a capsule earlier than every meal.”
Preventing Without end Chemical substances
Because of the success of his work with aflatoxins, Phillips started exploring focused, clay-based options to different issues, together with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Nicknamed “perpetually chemical substances,” PFAS embody 1000’s of grease-resistant chemical substances utilized in the whole lot from clothes to detergents and pizza containers; they will take 1000’s of years to interrupt down within the setting. Many PFAS have additionally been linked to most cancers and different illnesses.
On the Texas A&M Superfund Research Center, Phillips leads one of many heart’s 5 central initiatives devoted to finding out and remediating environmental hazards, together with publicity to PFAS and aflatoxins.
“I wished to create one thing that would assist mitigate exposures in people following disasters and emergencies,” he stated. “That features flooding — which may carry chemical-laden water from industrial amenities into residential areas — and drought, which may intensify the presence of aflatoxins.”
Phillips and his workforce had been capable of create two totally different clay-based merchandise that may assist scale back hazardous exposures — an ingestible clay sorbent and a topical barrier cream.
“We discovered that sure nutrient-amended clays do an excellent job of adhering to PFAS and supplies like heavy metals and pesticides,” he stated. “When ingested, they assist to take away these supplies from the intestine earlier than they are often absorbed, much like the merchandise we developed for aflatoxins.”
Barrier cream, alternatively, helps to forestall poisonous chemical substances from being absorbed by means of the pores and skin.
“The clay-based barrier cream is useful for anybody who may be wading by means of floodwater, together with first responders and emergency personnel,” Phillips stated. “We’ve additionally created formulations with antibacterial properties, and now we’re engaged on growing variations with solar safety for most of the people utilizing solely compounds which can be GRAS, or ‘usually acknowledged as secure.’ We’re even wanting into making a lip balm.”
Going Inexperienced
Phillips’ curiosity in sorbents has additionally led him to work with out of doors vegetation in new methods.
“Vegetation have a waxy coating on their leaves referred to as the cuticle,” he stated. “It helps defend them, however we discovered that it additionally binds to dangerous chemical substances within the air. For instance, our former Superfund workforce performed research of pine needles close to a hazardous website in Wyoming and located that the needles closest to the location’s heart had greater concentrations of risky chemical substances than these additional away from the location.”
Risky chemical substances, together with risky natural chemical substances (VOCs), are a typical air high quality concern as a result of their chemical construction makes them very prone to disperse into the air. Fumes from candles, family cleaners, and new furnishings are frequent culprits of poor air high quality in properties, however gasoline launched close to hazardous industrial websites can attain much more harmful ranges.
“We’ve recognized for a very long time that numerous vegetation are essential for producing oxygen, but it surely seems they’re serving to clear the air round us in different methods, too,” Phillips stated. “One of many subsequent goals we’re engaged on is utilizing chlorophyll — the pigment that makes vegetation inexperienced — in air filtration gadgets for the house due to its capacity to bind benzene, a cancer-causing chemical that comes from issues like gasoline fumes and cigarette smoke.”
Phillips’ lab additionally plans to collaborate with different researchers within the Superfund Heart to mix the simplest vegetation as sorbents for poisonous chemical substances with inexperienced structure.
“Dr. Galen Newman, from the School of Structure, helps communities plan inexperienced areas that assist remediate environmental exposures,” Phillips stated. “Because of my workforce’s current analysis, we plan to supply him with a listing of outside vegetation that would be the only binders of VOCs.
“We’ve additionally accomplished analysis on including refined clays and green-engineered clays containing chlorophyll on to the soil, particularly in flood and backyard fashions,” he stated. “These clays act as tight obstacles that bind and detain chemical substances within the soil in order that vegetation can’t take up them, which protects any meals grown in that area and prevents leaching of chemical substances to floor water.”
Offering Options To Advanced Issues
Whereas Phillips nonetheless hopes that future researchers will discover an environment friendly technique to take away and eliminate hazardous chemical substances within the setting, his analysis will assist people and animals dwell with the issue within the meantime.
“You may’t simply dig up and switch all of the contaminated soil each time there’s a catastrophe,” Phillips stated. “It’s not economically possible, and likewise, what are you able to do with contaminated soil? Very excessive temperatures, much like these present in volcanoes and superheated water, are required to successfully destroy very steady chemical substances like PFAS.
“One factor that is smart for now are edible sorbents which you could have in your house or can take internally — one thing you’ll be able to put in your meals or your favourite power drink — and be shielded from short-term publicity to poisonous chemical substances in meals and water following disasters or emergencies,” he stated. “That’s why I’ve devoted my profession to finding out them and their potential purposes.”
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Notice: This story initially appeared within the Summer 2025 issue of VMBS Today.
For extra details about the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medication & Biomedical Sciences, please go to our web site at vetmed.tamu.edu or be part of us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
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