For several years, I’ve been telling my friends what I’m going to tell you: throw away your black plastic spatula. In a world of plastic consumer goods, avoiding the material altogether requires the fervor of religious conversion. But getting rid of black plastic kitchenware is a low-stakes decision and well worth it. Cooking with any plastic is a questionable business, because the heat encourages plastic compounds potentially harmful to emigrate out of polymers and potentially into foods. But, as Andrew Turner, a biochemist at the University of Plymouth, told me recently, it’s especially important to avoid black plastic.

In 2018, Turner published one of the first articles positing that black plastic products were likely regularly made from recycled e-waste. The clue was the flame retardant level of the plastic. In some cases, the mix of chemicals matched the profile of those commonly found in computer and television cases, many of which are treated with flame retardants to prevent them from catching fire.

Because optical sensors in recycling facilities I can’t detect Black plastics are largely discarded from domestic waste streams, leading to a shortage of black feedstock for recycled plastic. So demand for black plastic appears to be met “largely” by e-waste recycling, according to Turner’s research. TV and computer boxes, like the majority of global plastic wastetend to be recycled in informal waste economies with few regulations and end up being refashioned into consumer products, including those, such as spatulas and skimmers, that come into contact with food.

You just don’t want fire retardants anywhere near your stir-fry. Flame retardants are generally not bound to the polymers to which they are added, which makes them particularly dangerous: they dislodge easily and end up in the environment. And, indeed, another 2018 paper found that flame retardants in black cookware stir into hot cooking oil. The health problems associated with these chemicals are well established: some flame retardants are endocrine disruptorswhich can interfere with the body’s hormonal system, and the scientific literature suggests that they may be associated with a range of diseases, including thyroid disease, diabetesand cancer. People with the highest blood levels of PBDE, a class of flame retardants found in black plastic, had about a 300 percent higher risk of dying from cancer than people with the lowest levels, one study found. weaker. study published this year. In a separate studypublished this month in a peer-reviewed journal, researchers from the advocacy group Toxic-Free Future and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam found that of all consumer products tested, cookware had some of the highest levels of highest flame retardants.

Another food product, black plastic sushi trays, had the highest level of flame retardants in the study. Children’s toys also ranked highly: a single pirate-themed children’s plastic necklace was flame retardant at almost 3% by weight. “When you use black plastic items, there is a risk that they will become contaminated,” Megan Liu, chief science and policy officer at Toxic-Free Future and first author of the study, told me. These flame retardants migrate into the saliva of toddlers and in the dust of our homes and, therefore, in the air we breathe. Last year, Toxic-Free Future was tested breast milk taken from 50 women in the United States and found flame retardant compounds in each sample.

Many of the flame-retardant compounds revealed in testing by Liu and his co-authors are no longer expected to appear in the product stream. Brominated flame retardants have mostly been phased out of products in the United States and Europe, including in many electronic devices. In the United States and elsewhere, some of the most harmful flame retardant compounds are now illegal in most consumer goods. Massachusetts forbidden a list of 11 flame retardants in 2021. As of this year, a New York Invoice restricts the use of organohalogen flame retardants – a large class of compounds – in electronic enclosures, and a similar ban in Washington state will take effect in 2025.

But these compounds keep coming back. The sushi platter 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 forbidden of most U.S. trade in 2022 and were largely abandoned well before that. As plastic recycling is a poorly monitored global economy, patchwork legislation may do little to keep these compounds out of the supply chain. “You send your e-waste overseas and you just have no idea what happens to it,” Turner told me. “I think the assumption is that it is handled safely and disposed of properly. But you know, it comes back in the form of things we don’t want.

For a consumer, this problem would be easier to manage if it was clear that only certain black plastic products presented a risk, or that all presented a risk. But Turner discovered that the products were randomly contaminated with flame retardants. Not all of the black plastics he tested in his 2018 study contained these compounds, and among those that did, “the amount of chemicals in the black plastic varied wildly,” he said. Some items would have the same chemical profile as would be expected from, say, the flame-retardant plastic casing of a television or cell phone. Other items would have only a trace of flame retardant, if at all. Of more than 200 black plastic products that Liu purchased from retail stores for her study, virtually none were labeled as being made from recycled materials, she said. Consumers have no way of knowing which black plastics may be recycled e-waste and which are not. “Realistically, it’s just a minefield,” Turner said.

Putting your black plastic in the recycling bin may seem like the right thing to do, but recycling is not a solution to the more harmful qualities of plastics. “I personally threw away my black plastic takeout containers,” Liu told me, because if they become contaminated, “it’s scary to think that they could re-enter other products containing the same retardants. flame”. Until flame retardants and all questionable compounds that replace banned ones are eliminated from the supply chain, the reuse of black plastic will perpetuate a potential health risk. According to her, “the onus should not be on consumers to have to make these daily changes in their lives.” Ultimately, federal bans or more pervasive state laws that go beyond phasing out a single compound are the only way to prevent flame retardants from entering takeout containers and the like. black plastics intended for use in items such as food utensils and toys. Until manufacturers use safer flame-retardant compounds and laws effectively prohibit recycled electronic materials from entering consumer products, these chemicals will continue to circulate in our kitchens, appearing and reappearing like toxic zombies.

But that doesn’t mean we have to consume them in our kitchen utensils. Replacing a black plastic spatula with a steel or silicone spatula is a simple way to reduce at least part of the daily dose of hormone disruptors. I also took this news as a reason to convince myself to carry a reusable coffee cup more often, if only to avoid the black plastic lids of disposable cups – heat and plastic equate to chemical migration, after all. It’s a minefield of random dangers, as Turner said. Most of the time we try to navigate without a map. But in some areas at least we can chart a safer path for ourselves.