Each and every day our bodies – and indeed our trillions of microbes – are exposed to foreign chemicals. Collectively, these are known as xenobiotics, taken from the Greek word for stranger, xenos.

Most of the ingested material and compounds are foods and drugs. Some of these cannot be utilized by the body as foods. These may be harmful if they accumulated in cells, as they have no metabolic ...

Xenobiotics are foreign substances, originating from outside the body.