People Are Ditching Plastic Cooking Utensils After a New (Disturbing) Study
You may want to scour your kitchen for those popular black plastic kitchen utensils, and then toss them. A new study published in the journal Chemosphere just released information linking them to a banned chemical.
Here’s what we know: The study detected alarming amounts of toxic flame retardants in various products, including children’s toys, takeout containers, kitchen utensils, and grocery meat and produce trays.
Flame retardants are chemicals applied to certain products to make them less likely to burn. Certain ones can be a concern to human health and the environment. As a result, certain states, like California, have gone as far as to warn the public about specific ones like Antimony trioxide, Chlorinated tris, Pentabromodiphenyl ether, tetrabromobisphenol A, and Tris(2-chloroethyl) phosphate. These types of chemicals can be inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through the skin and can lead to fetal developmental issues in pregnant people and even liver damage.
According to the report, people who use black plastic kitchen utensils like spatulas or slotted spoons can be exposed to an average of 34.7 parts per million of decabromodiphenyl ether, or decaBDE, each day. This chemical is part of the polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDE, family of flame retardants. A study found that people with high levels of PBDEs in their blood are 300 percent more likely to experience terminal cancer.
“I would recommend not using black plastic for food contact materials or buying toys with black plastic pieces,” Linda Birnbaum, a toxicologist and former director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program, told CNN.
The study only examined black plastics, so there are no additional details about whether any other colors of this material may be exposed. The researchers also didn’t list any brand names involved in the test.
To limit your risk for exposure, you should replace all of the plastic utensils in your kitchen with stainless steel ones, Megan Liu, one of the lead study authors and science and policy manager for Toxic-Free Future, told CNN. You may also want to nix that habit of reusing black plastic takeout containers just to be safe.
While experts are urging consumers to take matters into their own hands, they also hope for policy changes to help make this easier. “We need government and corporate policies that restrict the use of these harmful chemicals like flame retardants and hazardous plastics so that we can safely recycle items without worrying about chemical contamination and our health,” Liu said.
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