If you recently threw out all of your black plastic kitchen utensils after reading any of the dozens of articles that were published online about them being dangerous, I’ve got some bad news for you.
If you need to catch up: People were freaking out over the health risks of flame retardants in black plastic kitchenware. Well, it turns out the study all of those articles quoted got its math a little bit wrong. You may still want to get rid of your black plastic utensils. But there isn’t as much urgency to do so.
This all began when researchers from an organization called Toxic-Free Future suggested in a published paper that the degree to which black plastic kitchenware was filled with BFRs, or Brominated Flame Retardants, was way above normal and safe levels. The reason these BFRs are even in black plastic kitchenware, like spatulas and ladles, is that these utensils tend to be made with recycled parts from electronics.
These electronics, like TVs, for instance, contain flame-retardant materials. Within the context of electronics, flame retardants are a good thing. If your TV overheats, those flame-retardant chemicals could prevent a fire, or at least a bigger fire. But then those flame-retardant materials get recycled and turned into black plastic kitchenware. Then you use them while you’re cooking and some of those flame-retardant materials leak into your food. Now they’re in your system, posing health risks like cancer, nerve damage, and hormonal disruption.
Are Black Kitchen Utensils Not Safe?
However, there was a slight problem with the study, pointed out by people from all different walks of life and corners of the internet who all have one trait in common: they know math. One of those people was a guy named Joe Schwarcz, a chemist from McGill University. For reference, before you read the following direct quote from NationalPost.com claiming the math of it all, just know that the “BDE – 209” referenced is the flame-retardant kitchenware contaminant.
On to the quote:
The paper correctly gives the reference dose for BDE-209 as 7,000 nanograms per kilogram of body weight per day, but calculates this into a limit for a 60-kilogram adult of 42,000 nanograms per day. So, as the paper claims, the estimated actual exposure from kitchen utensils of 34,700 nanograms per day is more than 80 percent of the EPA limit of 42,000.
That sounds bad. But 60 times 7,000 is not 42,000. It is 420,000. This is what Joe Schwarcz noticed. The estimated exposure is not even a tenth of the reference dose. That does not sound as bad.
Some bad multiplication led to an outcome that was far worse than it seemed at first. The study’s lead author, Megan Liu, acknowledged the error and referred to it as a “typo.” She says that the correction would be made to the study’s text soon. However, she acknowledges that it does not change the study’s original conclusion.
Even Joe Schwarcz agrees with the study’s initial hypothesis even if a mathematical error exaggerated the results. So should you — or did you already — toss out all of your black plastic kitchen utensils? Sure, if you want. But it’s not as dire as it once seemed.
The post That Study About Toxic Black Kitchen Utensils Was Kind of Wrong appeared first on VICE.
The post That Study About Toxic Black Kitchen Utensils Was Kind of Wrong appeared first on VICE.
