The Great Spatula Panic of 2024

Maybe you heard about this in passing like I did? At some point last fall I caught a headline about throwing away all of the black spatulas in your kitchen. I didn’t stop the read the story I just noted it and moved on. I even mentioned it to my wife at one point because we have a couple of black pieces of kitchenware along with several other types. She hadn’t heard about it at all and I just forgot about it. But for a brief time this was really a thing. Here’s how the LA Times reported it in November.

Go to your kitchen, grab your black spatula and throw it in the trash. Immediately.

That’s the alarming message from a new study published in the journal Chemosphere. Cooking with any plastic utensil has long been seen as worrisome because heat can cause chemicals in the plastic to migrate into the food you’re about to eat. But researchers are now saying products made from recycled black plastic contain even more toxic components.

The authors of the Chemosphere study found that everyday household items that are made of black recycled plastic, including kitchen utensils, take-out containers, toys and hair accessories, have a high chance of containing dangerous levels of flame retardants and other toxic chemicals.

This sort of thing was everywhere at the time. Here’s CNN last October emphasizing the risk to children.

Black-colored plastic used in children’s toys, takeout containers, kitchen utensils and grocery meat and produce trays may contain alarming levels of toxic flame retardants that may be leaching from electronic products during recycling, a new study found.

“A product with one of the highest levels of flame retardants were black plastic pirate coin beads that kids wear — they resemble Mardi Gras beads but more for costume wear,” said lead study author Megan Liu, science and policy manager for Toxic-Free Future, an environmental advocacy group.

And here’s the Atlantic’s entry titled “Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula.”

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.

The NY Times:

It’s probably time to ditch your black plastic utensils.

Research suggests that there’s a high chance that black plastic can contain concerning levels of toxic chemicals, including flame retardants, which can leach into food during cooking.

Slate did the “Ackshually…” Slate thing and published an article titled “I’m Not Throwing Away My Black Plastic Spatula.”

People are regularly worried about whether their generic kitchen goods are poisoning them. Whether it’s lead in Lunchables, air pollution from gas stoves, or chemicals leaching from nonstick pans, there are constantly concerns from all corners that we are slowly being killed by our food, one way or another.

The newest example in this genre: Concerning compounds in black plastic spatulas are migrating into our cooking oil…The idea has found legs on social media, with wellness influencers the world over furiously telling people to get rid of their black plastic goods.

The reality is nuanced: Yes, there is a real problem that’s been identified. But, on the level of the cookware in your kitchen, it’s not that concerning. I’m an epidemiologist, I have looked closely at the research, and I am still using my black plastic spatula. I have no plans to stop any time soon.

And it turns out, Slate was more right than they knew. Just as this trend was catching on and people were sending all of their black spatulas to the city dump, the researchers behind the original study admitted they had made a fairly simple math mistake regarding FDA safety limits, known as the reference dose.

The safe daily dose of BDE is 7,000 nanograms per kilogram of body weight; their study assumed a body weight of 60kg and came up with a safe dose of 42,000 nanograms — too close to the daily dose of 34,700 from those eeeeeeeevil black plastic utensils.

Except that 7,000 times 60 is not, in fact, 42,000 but 420,000. Making that “worryingly high” dose of BDE totally trivial.

They were off by a literal order of magnitude.

Oops! So that black spatula is probably not going to kill you after all. I guess it doesn’t hurt to know that you might be exposed to fewer toxic chemicals if you choose a different spatula but there’s no reason to panic at this point. 

The researchers behind this, who have Ph.Ds in various fields, deserve credit for admitting the mistake, but you have to wonder how none of the peer-reviewers caught it. I mean, isn’t that what peer-review is supposed to do? In this case finding the mistake didn’t require an advance degree. Any high school kid could have seen it.

I never did throw out my black slotted spoon and I still won’t. At most, I may decide to reheat leftovers that come in one of those shiny black plastic containers on a plate instead. Will it really matter? Probably not, but it also can’t hurt.