Activated charcoal is pure carbon comprised of millions of tiny micropores which have a large surface area. Just one gram of activated carbon has a surface area in excess of 3,000 m2. This high degree of microporosity makes it extremely effective in binding to vast amounts of organic material. Used for thousands of years for its adsorbing (bonding) properties, it is still the most widely used drawing substance available today. This is why charcoal is found in water filters and used to treat acute poisoning in hospitals around the world as an emergency decontaminant.

 

Charcoal is produced by slow combustion in the relative absence of oxygen. Burnt toast and charcoal briquettes are NOT charcoal. Treatment with super heated steam produces “activated” charcoal which is capable of a much greater adsorptive effect. This is because more surfaces of the charcoal have been exposed.

Activated charcoal works by undergoing a process known as "adsorption". This is when a solid, or molecule of a gas or liquid adheres or binds to the charcoal atom instead of being filtered into it (ie. absorption). Activated charcoal attracts impurities like a magnet to remove them safely.

Internally, charcoal cannot adsorb all poisons, but it can bind with, and thus neutralise many of them. Here are but a few of the many things it adsorbs:

• Many industrial toxins including DDT and dieldrin, strychnine, malathion, parathion
• Many medical drugs including aspirin, barbiturates cocaine, opium, nicotine, morphine, penicillin and sulphas.
• Many inorganic chemicals including mercury, phosphorous, chlorine, lead, iron and silver.