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Transcript:
Good news! We can all go to our trash cans and push aside the empty Pop Tart wrappers to find those black plastic kitchen utensils we all threw away a few months ago because the mainstream media told us that scientists discovered they are literally going to kill us. Because it turns out, that recommendation was based on a typo, or a math mistake if you prefer: the study incorrectly said that 7,000 times 60 equals 42,000, and now I have no way to move mulled wine from the slow cooker into my mug. Thanks for nothing, science!
In case you missed it, back in October the news hit that a new study found dangerously high levels of a cancer-causing ingredient in black plastic objects, which includes things that touch our food like my dearly departed ladle or sushi take-out trays, as well as toys like plastic bead necklaces that we give to kids to gnaw on.
The paper in question was published in the journal Chemosphere, and was authored by researchers working for Toxic Free Future, a nonprofit that’s been around for 40 years advocating for consumer safety, which these days seems mostly focused on so-called “forever chemicals,” or “PFAS.” If you want to know more about PFAS, I first talked about it back in 2020 when a similar nonprofit, the Environmental Working Group, released a report saying that they found these chemicals in the drinking water for nearly 50 cities around the US. I pointed out that EWG had a lengthy history of identifying real areas of concern but then using exaggerated claims of risks in order to grab headlines. That report was no different: they failed to differentiate between any of the hundreds of different chemicals that fall under the “PFAS” label, and exaggerated some research that finds there MAY be SOME health risks linked with SOME of those chemicals. PFAS are now in nearly everything we use, especially to make things water or oil or fire-resistant: candy wrappers, nonstick pans, wire insulation, and millions of other products. And they’re called “forever chemicals” because over time, researchers have realized that they don’t tend to degrade–they just kind of float around our environment, and often end up in our bodies. They were originally assumed to be inert, but now researchers are starting to notice a correlation with the industrial production of some of these chemicals and an increase in things like cancer and infertility.
So it’s probably best that we limit the production of these chemicals, and limit the amount of this stuff in our lives, but at this point there’s only so much individuals can do to protect themselves because, yeah, industry has already blasted this stuff everywhere. So now we need to call upon the government to fund more research and if necessary, ban certain dangerous chemicals. Like governments used to do in the good ol’ days. Remember when Republican president Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
So this new research from Toxic Free Future is certainly not unwelcome. We do need to know more about the areas of greatest concern, and their finding was interesting: there are brominated flame retardants, or BFRs, in black plastic utensils and toys.
Now, you may think, “Well of course! I don’t want my black plastic ladle to burst into flames when I sink it into my molton broccoli cheddar soup! It should have flame retardants.” Well, no. The flame retardants aren’t a feature, they’re a bug. The problem is that these utensils are made from recycled plastic, which usually would be a good thing, but in this case, it’s not. The original purpose of the plastic was in electronics, which did require flame retardants. No one is expecting you to heat up your PC mouse and then stick it in your mouth, so it might not matter much if it has chemicals that MIGHT be linked to cancer but definitely prevent your mouse from spontaneously combusting.
But when that plastic goes to the recycling center, things get a little trickier. They use infrared machines to identify plastics for recycling, but black plastic is often missed by those machines, sending that plastic to the landfill. So to make a product from recycled black plastic, some manufacturers rely on e-waste like your black PC mouse.
So this study did find that black kitchen utensils and toys contained chemicals like the fire retardant known as DecaBDE, which the EPA banned in the US last year due to its possible links to cancer.
But here’s where we get to the same old story that I see again and again with these environmental watchdog groups: the hyperbole. And in this case, it wasn’t just the organization saying that your spatula is going to give you cancer. The study specifically noted that the levels of DecaBDE they found in the utensils could result in a person consuming 34,700 nanograms per day, which they said approached the EPA’s safety limit, which is 7,000 nanograms per kilogram of body weight. They claimed that for a 60-kilogram (or 130-pound) adult, that was 42,000 nanograms per day. Which…it isn’t. It’s 420,000 nanograms per day. The levels they found actually didn’t even hit 10% of the EPA’s limit.
And hey, I get it more than anybody. I make at least one video each year with a really simple math mistake that I have to clarify in the transcript and description. But I’m not publishing in a peer-reviewed journal. It’s bonkers to me that this typo made it through to be published. Not only should the authors feel humiliated, but Chemosphere’s editors should also be ashamed.
Toxic-free Future published a correction but insisted that “this calculation error does not affect the overall conclusion of the paper,” which buries the point. The “overall conclusion” was that there recycled e-waste is being turned into kitchen utensils and children’s toys, leaving them with traces of fire retardants. Okay, sure. But a thousand breathless articles would probably not have been published about this study if they admitted those traces are far, far below what is considered potentially harmful. People across the world probably wouldn’t have rushed to chuck their black plastic spatulas into the trash if they knew the only danger was if they threw it in the oven, melted it down, and drank it like a daily forbidden smoothie. And now we just have a bunch more black plastic waste headed to landfills.
So do you need to throw your black plastic utensils away? Probably not, no, but if it’s damaged or melted at all, yeah sure, toss it.
Should you buy black plastic kitchen utensils in the future? No, of course not. I mean, sure, one reason is that maybe there are dangerous chemicals in them in some amount, but more importantly, they suck. I actually do have a black plastic spatula (or turner or flipper or whatever) that I inherited from my partner. It’s my step-spatula. And I hate it! It lifts things off a hot pan about as well as a playing card. It works better as a fly swatter than a flipper.
So no, don’t buy crappy plastic utensils. Go to your local restaurant supply store and get yourself the kind of kitchen tool that can survive the apocalypse. Or Sunday brunch service. Same thing.
