Are Black Plastic Kitchen Tools Toxic?

 Do we need to get rid of our black plastic kitchen tools?  Katie Okamoto reports in a recent New York Times piece that "research suggests that there's a chance that black plastic in particular may contain low levels of toxic chemicals.  But she then notes that "a math error in one high-profile study led the authors to issue a correction, though the authors maintained there conclusion stands."

Let's look at that study and that error.  Joseph Brean at the National Post examines the paper and it's conclusions.  The study found that "using contaminated kitchenware could cause a median uptake of 34,700 nanograms of decabromodiphenylether," a fire retardant known as BDE-209.   By contaminated kitchenware they mean black plastic kitchenware.  The fire retardant makes it's way into the utensils by way of the recycling of plastics from various electronics, usually from Asia.  The BDI-209 is considered toxic by the EPA which has set a reference dose at 7000 nanograms per kg of bodyweight per day.  The reference dose is a dose below which there is not a serious risk toxic consequences.  The authors of the study than calculate the reference dose for a 60 kg adult as , nanograms per day and conclude that their median uptake is 80% of the reference dose.  The problem is that the reference dose for a 60 kg adult should be 60 x 7000 or 420,000 nanograms per day so that their median uptake number is on 8% of the reference dose which hardly seems cause for concern.  Nevertheless while the authors published a correction fixing the number they did not change their conclusion.

Okamoto goes on the list possible health problems from plastics in general including the dangers of microplastic generated from degradation of plastics in the environment.  She also notes that black plastic is difficult to sort and reuse in typical US community recycling processes.  She recommends replacing black plastic utensils with silicon utensils which seem functionally equivalent and not especially expensive.

While Okamoto's conclusions seem reasonable a least for customers purchasing new utensils, the information available hardly justify throwing your black plastic utensils away. The message might be that research from advocacy groups needs to be viewed with some skepticism.  The research discussed here came from the advocacy group "Toxic Free Future" and was published in Chemosphere, a peer-reviewed journal.  This is discouraging since the error is a simple one and it's discovery should have triggered some change in the conclusions of the paper which it did not.

The Cost of Cutting the Science Budget

 The administration's cuts to federal science funding could have substantial costs in long term economic development according to studies cited in a NYTimes report (04/30/2025) by NYT chief economics reporter Ben Casselman.  

Researchers like this may disappear as a result of Trump Administration

Science budget cuts

An American University study found that a 25% cut in science funding would result in a long term reduction of 3.8% in US GDP and a 4.4% reduction in government revenues.  That is comparable to the effects of the Great Recession which ended in 2009.  The reduction would occur over years rather than months, but it would be more lasting.  The AU study is consistent with other studies.  A recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that government sponsored research accounted for 20% of the productivity growth since WWII.  An author of the Federal Reserve study, Texas A&M economist Andrew Fieldhouse, said, “If you look at a long period of time, a lot of our increase in living standards seems to be coming from public investment in scientific research, The rates of return are just really high.”

There is a tradition of private and philanthropic research support for hospitals, medical research institutes, commercial product development, and sometimes particular fundamental research resources like telescopes.  But government supports sustained long term research that provides fundamental understanding of the world around us and new knowledge that belongs to the public rather than private entities.  The studies suggest that this research is simply irreplaceable.

The report is obviously positive on science in general and by implication chemistry in particular.  One bit of context would be the extent to which large reductions in the science budgets would actually reduce the federal overall budget and particularly the federal deficit.