Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula

ph1l · Nov 1, 2024

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/10/black-plastic-spatula-flame-retardants/680452/

It’s probably leaching chemicals into your cooking oil.
By Zoë Schlanger

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.
October 30, 2024
For the past several years, I’ve been telling my friends what I’m going to tell you: Throw out your black plastic spatula. In a world of plastic consumer goods, avoiding the material entirely requires the fervor of a religious conversion. But getting rid of black plastic kitchen utensils is a low-stakes move, and worth it. Cooking with any plastic is a dubious enterprise, because heat encourages potentially harmful plastic compounds to migrate out of the polymers and potentially into the food. But, as Andrew Turner, a biochemist at the University of Plymouth recently told me, black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid.

In 2018, Turner published one of the earliest papers positing that black plastic products were likely regularly being made from recycled electronic waste. The clue was the plastic’s concerning levels of flame retardants. In some cases, the mix of chemicals matched the profile of those commonly found in computer and television housing, many of which are treated with flame retardants to prevent them from catching fire.

Because optical sensors in recycling facilities can’t detect them, black-colored plastics are largely rejected from domestic-waste streams, resulting in a shortage of black base material for recycled plastic. So the demand for black plastic appears to be met “in no insignificant part” via recycled e-waste, according to Turner’s research. TV and computer casings, like the majority of the world’s plastic waste, tend to be recycled in informal waste economies with few regulations and end up remolded into consumer products, including ones, such as spatulas and slotted spoons, that come into contact with food.

You simply do not want flame retardants anywhere near your stir-fry. Flame retardants are typically not bound to the polymers to which they are added, making them a particular flight risk: They dislodge easily and make their way into the surrounding environment. And, indeed, another paper from 2018 found that flame retardants in black kitchen utensils readily migrate into hot cooking oil. The health concerns associated with those chemicals are well established: Some flame retardants are endocrine disruptors, which can interfere with the body’s hormonal system, and scientific literature suggests that they may be associated with a range of ailments, including thyroid disease, diabetes, and cancer. People with the highest blood levels of PBDEs, a class of flame retardants found in black plastic, had about a 300 percent increase in their risk of dying from cancer compared with people who had the lowest levels, according to a study released this year. In a separate study, published in a peer-reviewed journal this month, researchers from the advocacy group Toxic-Free Future and from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam found that, out of all of the consumer products they tested, kitchen utensils had some of the highest levels of flame retardants.

Another food product, black plastic sushi trays, had the highest level of flame retardants in the study. Children’s toys also ranked high: A single pirate-themed plastic children’s necklace was almost 3 percent flame retardant by weight. “When you’re using black plastic items, there’s going to be a risk that they could be contaminated,” Megan Liu, the science and policy manager at Toxic-Free Future and the first author on the study, told me. Those flame retardants migrate into toddlers’ saliva and into the dust in our homes and, thus, in the air we breathe. Last year, Toxic-Free Future tested breast milk taken from 50 women in the U.S. and found flame-retardant compounds in each sample.

Many of the flame-retardant compounds that showed up in the tests that Liu and her co-authors conducted should no longer be in the product stream. Brominated flame retardants have mostly been phased out of products in the U.S. and Europe, including from many electronics. In the U.S. and elsewhere, some of the most harmful flame-retardant compounds are now illegal for use in most consumer goods. Massachusetts banned a list of 11 flame retardants in 2021. Starting this year, a New York bill restricts the use of organohalogen flame retardants—one large class of the compounds—in electronic casings, and a similar Washington State ban will go into effect in 2025.

But these compounds keep coming back. The sushi tray tested in Liu’s study contained 11,900 parts per million of decaBDE, also called BDE-209, which she described as a “really alarming” level of a chemical that was banned from most U.S. commerce in 2022 and largely phased out of production long before that. Because plastic recycling is a global economy with scant oversight, patchwork legislation may do little to keep these compounds out of the supply chain. “You send your electronic waste abroad, and you just haven’t got a clue what happens to it,” Turner told me. “I think the assumption is that it gets handled safely and it’s disposed of properly. But, you know, it comes back in the form of things that we don’t want.”

For a consumer, this problem would be simpler to handle if it was clear that only certain black plastic products posed a risk, or that all of them did. But Turner found that products were contaminated with flame retardants at random. Not all of the black plastic he tested in his 2018 study contained the compounds, and in those that did, “the amount of chemicals in the black plastic varied hugely,” he said. Some items would have the same chemical profile of what you’d expect from, say, the flame-retardant plastic housing of a television or a cellphone. Other objects would have just a trace of flame retardant, or none at all. Of the more than 200 black plastic products Liu bought at retail stores for her study, hardly any were labeled as being made from recycled materials, she said. Consumers have no way to tell which black plastics might be recycled e-waste and which aren’t. “It’s just a minefield, really,” Turner said.

Putting your black plastic in the recycling bin might seem like the right thing to do, but recycling isn’t a solution to the most noxious qualities of plastics. “I personally have been throwing out my black plastic takeout containers,” Liu told me, because if they are contaminated, “it’s scary to think that those might be reentering other products with the same flame retardants.” Until flame retardants and any dubious compounds that arise to replace banned ones are eliminated from the supply chain, reusing black plastic will perpetuate a potential health hazard. In her view, “the onus shouldn’t fall on consumers to have to make these daily changes in their lives.” Ultimately, federal bans or more ubiquitous state laws that go beyond single-compound phaseouts are the only way to keep flame retardants out of takeout containers and other black plastic intended for use in things such as foodware and toys. Until manufacturers use safer flame-retardant compounds and laws effectively prohibit recycled electronics material from entering consumer products, these chemicals will continue circulating through our kitchens, arising and re-arising like toxic zombies.

But that doesn’t mean we need to consume them by way of our kitchen utensils. Replacing a black plastic spatula with a steel or silicone option is an easy way to cut down on at least part of one’s daily dose of hormone disruptors. I’ve also taken this news as a reason to coax myself into carrying a reusable coffee mug more often, if only to avoid the black plastic lids on disposable cups—heat plus plastic equals chemical migration, after all. It’s a minefield of random hazards out there, as Turner said. Most of the time we’re trying to navigate without a map. But in at least some areas, we can trace a safer path for ourselves.

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Tuxan · Nov 1, 2024

I use silicon tongs and bamboo spatula for this reason.

Irish white pudding on a Colombian corn arepa this morning

maxinger · Nov 1, 2024

The reason why you are using the spatula is because you are frying food with most likely vegetable oil.

Instead of throwing away the spatula, throw away the vegetable oil.
Vegetable oil is much more toxic.

ph1l · Dec 17, 2024

ph1l said:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/10/black-plastic-spatula-flame-retardants/680452/
More...

Not so fast ...
https://arstechnica.com/health/2024...k-plastic-study-authors-say-it-doesnt-matter/

Huge math error corrected in black plastic study; authors say it doesn’t matter

Correction issued for black plastic study that had people tossing spatulas.

Beth Mole – Dec 16, 2024 4:23 PM | 315

Close-up view of cooking utensils in container on kitchen counter Credit: Getty | Grace Cary
Editors of the environmental chemistry journal Chemosphere have posted an eye-catching correction to a study reporting toxic flame retardants from electronics wind up in some household products made of black plastic, including kitchen utensils. The study sparked a flurry of media reports a few weeks ago that urgently implored people to ditch their kitchen spatulas and spoons. Wirecutter even offered a buying guide for what to replace them with.

The correction, posted Sunday, will likely take some heat off the beleaguered utensils. The authors made a math error that put the estimated risk from kitchen utensils off by an order of magnitude.

Specifically, the authors estimated that if a kitchen utensil contained middling levels of a key toxic flame retardant (BDE-209), the utensil would transfer 34,700 nanograms of the contaminant a day based on regular use while cooking and serving hot food. The authors then compared that estimate to a reference level of BDE-209 considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA's safe level is 7,000 ng—per kilogram of body weight—per day, and the authors used 60 kg as the adult weight (about 132 pounds) for their estimate. So, the safe EPA limit would be 7,000 multiplied by 60, yielding 420,000 ng per day. That's 12 times more than the estimated exposure of 34,700 ng per day.

However, the authors missed a zero and reported the EPA's safe limit as 42,000 ng per day for a 60 kg adult. The error made it seem like the estimated exposure was nearly at the safe limit, even though it was actually less than a tenth of the limit.

"[W]e miscalculated the reference dose for a 60 kg adult, initially estimating it at 42,000 ng/day instead of the correct value of 420,000 ng/day," the correction reads. "As a result, we revised our statement from 'the calculated daily intake would approach the U.S. BDE-209 reference dose' to 'the calculated daily intake remains an order of magnitude lower than the U.S. BDE-209 reference dose.' We regret this error and have updated it in our manuscript."

Unchanged conclusion
While being off by an order of magnitude seems like a significant error, the authors don't seem to think it changes anything. "This calculation error does not affect the overall conclusion of the paper," the correction reads. The corrected study still ends by saying that the flame retardants "significantly contaminate" the plastic products, which have "high exposure potential."

Ars has reached out to the lead author, Megan Liu, but has not received a response. Liu works for the environmental health advocacy group Toxic-Free Future, which led the study.

The study highlighted that flame retardants used in plastic electronics may, in some instances, be recycled into household items.

"Companies continue to use toxic flame retardants in plastic electronics, and that's resulting in unexpected and unnecessary toxic exposures,” Liu said in a press release from October. "These cancer-causing chemicals shouldn't be used to begin with, but with recycling, they are entering our environment and our homes in more ways than one. The high levels we found are concerning."

BDE-209, aka decabromodiphenyl ether or deca-BDE, was a dominant component of TV and computer housings before it was banned by the European Union in 2006 and some US states in 2007. China only began restricting BDE-209 in 2023. The flame retardant is linked to carcinogenicity, endocrine disruption, neurotoxicity, and reproductive harm.

Uncommon contaminant
The presence of such toxic compounds in household items is important for noting the potential hazards in the plastic waste stream. However, in addition to finding levels that were an order of magnitude below safe limits, the study also suggested that the contamination is not very common.

The study examined 203 black plastic household products, including 109 kitchen utensils, 36 toys, 30 hair accessories, and 28 food serviceware products. Of those 203 products, only 20 (10 percent) had any bromine-containing compounds at levels that might indicate contamination from bromine-based flame retardants, like BDE-209. Of the 109 kitchen utensils tested, only nine (8 percent) contained concerning bromine levels.

"[A] minority of black plastic products are contaminated at levels >50 ppm [bromine]," the study states.

But that's just bromine compounds. Overall, only 14 of the 203 products contained BDE-209 specifically.

The product that contained the highest level of bromine compounds was a disposable sushi tray at 18,600 ppm. Given that heating is a significant contributor to chemical leaching, it's unclear what exposure risk the sushi tray poses. Of the 28 food serviceware products assessed in the study, the sushi tray was only one of two found to contain bromine compounds. The other was a fast food tray that was at the threshold of contamination with 51 ppm.

Beth Mole Senior Health Reporter
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ironchef · Dec 17, 2024

ph1l said:
Not so fast ...
https://arstechnica.com/health/2024...k-plastic-study-authors-say-it-doesnt-matter/
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And you are wondering why RFK Jr is questioning polio vaccines, fluorides in water, global warming...

Overnight · Dec 17, 2024

maxinger said:
The reason why you are using the spatula is because you are frying food with most likely vegetable oil.

Instead of throwing away the spatula, throw away the vegetable oil.
Vegetable oil is much more toxic.
More...

That is a vestige of hydrogenated vegetable oil evaporating into the air in factories that produce microwave popcorn.

Vegetable oil in liquid form is safe.

Tuxan · Dec 20, 2024

I'll stick with the bamboo spatula I've used for a decade. Knowing the coloring agents used in plastics from when I worked for a computer manufacturer, I just don't trust it.

There was a time, nearly 30 years ago they thought I was weird refusing to eat game shot with old school lead bullets (fragments and lead vapour). Sometimes you just know to not do whatever others do.

It happens that I have the air frier output ducted to the kitchen outside ventilator as its too warm here to have the extra heat in the room. Seems I accidentally dodged @Overnight 's popcorn-lung bullet with oil vapor then

Overnight · Dec 27, 2024

Tuxan said:
I'll stick with the bamboo spatula I've used for a decade. Knowing the coloring agents used in plastics from when I worked for a computer manufacturer, I just don't trust it.

There was a time, nearly 30 years ago they thought I was weird refusing to eat game shot with old school lead bullets (fragments and lead vapour). Sometimes you just know to not do whatever others do.

It happens that I have the air frier output ducted to the kitchen outside ventilator as its too warm here to have the extra heat in the room. Seems I accidentally dodged @Overnight 's popcorn-lung bullet with oil vapor then
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Indeed, it could be considered toxic.

Well, not exactly...