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A simple math error sparked a panic about black plastic kitchen utensils
- stevenhubertron 2y agoGlad I held on to my kitchen utensils. Given how broad the hype cycle was and how I was getting push notifications on my phone about it from multiple "news" sources it felt like hysteria. Likely helped black friday sales at Sur la Table though.
- minton 2y ago> “However, it is important to note that this does not impact our results,” Liu told National Post. “The levels of flame retardants that we found in black plastic household items are still of high concern, and our recommendations remain the same.”
- sib 2y agoRight - and this is why people don't trust these sources. Previous numbers, incorrectly stated at 10x true values: "of high concern because they are 80% of daily value" New numbers: "still of high concern even though they are only 8% of daily value"
- lowbloodsugar 2y agoAnd the person who found the error nevertheless agrees with the original conclusion, FTA: “As Schwarcz points out, it appears the study’s hypothesis is correct, that black plastic recycled out of electronic devices, mostly in Asia, is getting back into the American supply chain for household kitchen items, including spatulas.”
- giraffe_lady 2y agoThis is the perfect article for HN because the problem is still real and the recommendation to avoid black plastic around food is still good. But because there was an error that affects but does not undermine the conclusion, the entire premise is rejected. I think of this as "too technical to be correct." It's a really good example of how when writing for HN as an audience, it's best to use as few concrete details as possible. They will be scrutinized endlessly, and any flaw or inconsistency in them no matter how trivial or spurious will be taken as refutation of the entire statement.
- zelon88 2y agoIt's not hype. The FDA regularly issues guidance on "how much plastic" they allow in our food. I know someone who works in a lab that measures the chemicals transferred in such conditions. The results from his lab are used to certify food processing equipment. Basically, all plastic has chemicals that, given enough time, will leech into your food and cause contamination. The question is; how much do we tolerate as a society while still enjoying the cost and convenience of plastic? For me, I try to minimize plastic contact as much as possible. I only use metal utensils. I also use cast iron or stainless steel cookware with no coatings (other than seasoning the cast iron). 1) https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=does+plastic+leech+material+into+food https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=does+pl... 2) https://www.fda.gov/food/food-ingredients-packaging/packaging-food-contact-substances-fcs https://www.fda.gov/food/food-ingredients-packaging/packagin...
- bityard 2y agoI wonder how big is the risk of having a dishwasher with plastic components? Or a silverware drawer with plastic bins? Or meat and vegetables that come in plastic bags?
- zelon88 2y agoDishwasher; Will contaminate each dish a predictable amount, consistently. A tiny amount on each dish that correlates to about 3% of the surface area of each dish sitting in the rack for a couple of hours. So the max contaminant is n% of [surface area of each dish] per wash cycle. Silverware Bin; Will contaminate each utensil a predictable amount per unit of time, consistently, up until a saturation point where the utensile cannot contain any more contamination. So the max amount of contaminant is 1x[surface area of utensil]. Meat and veggies; Will be contaminated based on the amount of surface area in contact with plastic, and the amount of time time they spend in contact with plastic. So the max amount of contaminant is [surface area of food touching plastic]x[duration of exposure]. An important note, the food is usually refrigerated. Heat is what releases many of the chemicals from the plastic. A cooking utensile will contaminate food a highly variable amount based on; The amount of surface area that touches the food, how long the utensile touches the food, the temperature of the food, the fat content of the food, the temperature of the cookware/utensile, the age and quality of the utensile, and a slew of other factors. Additionally, we both have to deal with the three things you brought up. We all have dishwashers, and plastic bins, and plastic packaging. But you are ALSO using plastic utensils. So you invariably will have more chemicals from plastic than me, despite any other factors.
- SubiculumCode 2y agoEven so, I think there should be a broad push against plastic involvement in most aspects of the food supply. From microplastic pollution to endocrine-disruptive leeches, too much is too much.
- croes 2y agoOk it’s not 80% of EPA limit but only 8% But I don’t want 8% exposure either if it’s avoidable
- trehalose 2y agoIt's not 8% of some hypothetical dose dose that would be known to be harmless to humans. It's 8% of a dose that seemed harmless to mice, when administered for no longer than a mouse's lifespan, as far as the EPA looked.
- soco 2y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong but the study wouldn't gain much value if the chemicals were given after the mice lifespan?
- ben_w 2y agoWhile true, I believe the point is that mice don't live very long, so long term effects may not be visible. (I don't know how true that actually is, perhaps mice show effects faster, but this is one of the reasons I'm dubious about the value of animal testing even if we don't have much better methods available yet).
- mentalgear 2y agoEven if the factor is off by 10, it's already too much chemical exposure. Also EPA limits can often, due to industry pressure, be set way too high. So better be save and throw away that spatula, which actually this article also reiterates. ==== From the article: “However, it is important to note that this does not impact our results,” Liu told National Post. “The levels of flame retardants that we found in black plastic household items are still of high concern, and our recommendations remain the same.” So if you’re keen on eliminating these chemicals in any amount, chucking the black plastic kitchenware is a start, even if not as effective as the erroneous calculation suggests.
- gruez 2y ago>Even if the factor is off by 10, it's already too much chemical exposure. What's the basis for this conclusion, aside from taking the original study's author statements at face value? Someone else replied to the study[1] and characterized it as >Based on a worst-case scenario, you may be getting nanograms (billionths of a gram) of bromine or lead from your spatula, which is lower than the amount that you get from eating fresh fruit I did a quick skim of the atlantic article[2] and noticed that mentions of exposure thresholds were strangely absent, despite the pains they took to mention how those toxic substances were in the plastics, and how they caused harm. [1] https://www.threads.net/@gidmkhealthnerd/post/DBxbQERykRx?hl=en https://www.threads.net/@gidmkhealthnerd/post/DBxbQERykRx?hl... [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/10/black-plastic-spatula-flame-retardants/680452/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/10/black-pla...
- patrickhogan1 2y agoThat’s if you limit the comparison to just Bromine. You are ingesting recycled plastic from TVs and Tires, which also contains; Phthalates, Bisphenols, Polyvinyl Chloride, Styrene, PFAS, and several other chemicals shown to cause cancer or have an unlinked but possible cause of cancer (we don’t know yet but there are alternative utensils not made of black plastic that we do know that don’t have the big ?)
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- andrewmutz 2y agoUnfortunately this story will probably be far less viral than the previous story, so people will never find out that black utensils are fine
- warkdarrior 2y agoThis research was probably sponsored by the kitchen utensil-manufacturing industry.
- Jailbird 2y agoProbably not by Black Plastic Kitchen Utensil Co., though...
- creaturemachine 2y agoThis could only come from the National Post, cheerleaders of any conservative cause in Canada. They're pretty big boosters of the oil & gas industry, and supportive of every spin-off you can imagine. Their paper straw reportage is second to none.
- sinuhe69 2y agoDamn, even my kid learned from the danger of black plastic kitchenware from school and advised me to drop all of them!
- tqi 2y ago> The study, by researchers at the advocacy group Toxic-Free Future... It's interesting that we routinely dismiss studies funded by corporations as "biased" and "junk science", but never seem to scrutinize studies from other such advocacy groups. With a name like "Toxic-Free Future" it seems pretty obvious to me what their conclusions were going to be even before the study was done. Not because of nefarious reasons, but because confirmation bias is a difficult thing to overcome.
- dylan604 2y agoit's human nature. anything that confirms the direction you're already leaning will just be accepted without further scrutiny.
- tqi 2y agoSeeing the authors double down on their paper (characterizating it as a mere typo, saying it doesn't affect their conclusions) does not inspire confidence.
- dylan604 2y agoit's still >0, so it's just less bad not that it's not bad. At least they corrected it instead of just letting it linger out there
- semiquaver 2y agoI imagine it’s difficult emotionally to let go of the prestige conferred by a paper that got such wide recognition in the media for the mere fact that its conclusions are wrong.
- sigmoid10 2y agoVery often these are actually astroturfing competitors. There's certainly no shortage of plastic free "eco," "organic" or "green" kitchen utensil manufacturers. The only real approach here is to scrutinize everything and always be especially critical when someone comes up with something that sounds drastic.
- saulpw 2y agoThis error would have been much easier to catch if they had used mag notation[0]. [0] https://saul.pw/mag https://saul.pw/mag
- FredPret 2y agoWhy not just type 3.1E7 instead of the weird up arrow? Every software calculator I could think of to try understands this notation, it's easy to say and copy-paste, and the unit is clear from the context the original number is in.
- saulpw 2y agoBecause that's still 2 numbers, complicating comparisons and arithmetic, and the more important number is at the end. If you could use e7.5 then that would alleviate the problems, but no software/language/calculator accepts this notation, and using a caret like ^7.5 is more evocative than the already very-overloaded "e".
- adrian_b 2y agoWhile I agree that logarithms are better for expressing most physical quantities, when those values are used by humans, the "common logarithms" a.k.a. base-10 logarithms, which are used at your link, are completely obsolete. Binary logarithms are much more useful. Even when you are not using any automatic computer, but you are only doing computations in your head, binary logarithms are more convenient. Moreover, the inter-conversion between binary logarithms and decimal logarithms is very easy to do mentally, by the approximate rule that 10 units of binary logarithms match 3 units of decimal logarithms.
- saulpw 2y agoCute idea! But I hardly think base-10 logarithms are "completely" obsolete. We write numbers in base-10 and so the length of the number is its magnitude. Your statement is like saying that strlen() is obsolete and we should be using strlen2() which reports the number of bits in the string instead.
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- oidar 2y agoScientific results, when presented to the general public, often lose their nuance and context, even when news organizations strive for accuracy. Translating complex data into digestible news sacrifices precision, leading to widespread misunderstandings about science and the value of correction within the scientific community.And when there’s a genuine mistake in a study, like this one, the entire study is unfortunately dismissed.
- simgt 2y agoUse carbon steel pans and stainless steel utensils anyway. Better for everyone, extremely durable and, shockingly, they don't stick. Bonus point your fried eggs get a delicious wok hei. Somehow we all got convinced that teflon and complex polymers were solving a problem... It's simply not true.
- silisili 2y agoWhile I agree with the advice, and all I use are steel and cast iron, I think you need a big disclaimer on "they don't stick." To a new user coming from Teflon, they absolutely stick. It takes a combination of seasoning and temp setting to get something approaching nonstick, but if we're being honest, it's still not quite as slippery as Teflon. For most people though, I think it gets good enough.
- simgt 2y ago> To a new user coming from Teflon, they absolutely stick. That's exactly what I read everywhere before buying the pans a couple years ago, I was fully expecting things to stick a lot but somehow never had issues...
- tidbits 2y agoI have found seasoning doesn't affect the stickiness of the pan. My MIL left my carbon steel pan sitting in water, so I had to grind it to the bone to remove the rust. But even with no seasoning, I was able to cook eggs no problem. The key is temperature control. However, the pan started getting rusty from just sitting out, so I ended up re-seasoning it anyway.
- bityard 2y ago> and, shockingly, they don't stick. I have stainless steel pans and have never experienced this.
- jmcclell 2y agoCarbon steel pans are seasoned and generally will be stored with a light coat of oil. You'll add oil while cooking, as well. My carbon steel pans don't stick – an egg will happily glide on the surface. Stainless steel pans are not seasoned, but can still be relatively non-stick as long as they are heated properly prior to use. Heating them closes the pores in the pan's surface, making the surface smoother. Add oil after the pan is properly heated. This youtube video explains the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB-SCA1reqE&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB-SCA1reqE&t=1s
- michaelt 2y agoPreviously on HN: "Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid" 475 points, 845 comments, 42 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41996156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41996156
- FredPret 2y agoI read an article about "crunchy moms" https://www.wsj.com/style/rfk-jr-health-initiatives-crunchy-moms-d8efee00 https://www.wsj.com/style/rfk-jr-health-initiatives-crunchy-... They like steel and glass kitchenware only. I guess that makes me a crunchy dad (at least when it comes to the kitchen): with any type of plastic, we don't really know what it's really going to do to you long term. Might be nothing at all, but it might be lots of really bad things. But with steel and lead-free glass? It just sits there doing its job for decades on end, no leaching, no reacting, no bits of microplastic in the cooking. If I saved up the money I spent on non-stick pans, I could've bought several sets of good steel ones, each of which will outlast me. Same goes for steel spatulas.
- darknavi 2y agoMostly unrelated, but glass in the kitchen: I was in a restaurant the other day and a friend pointed out a small chip on a pint glass. They mentioned that many people take their glass cups and scoop ice out of an ice drawer which can result in small glass shards to be ejected into the ice drawer (and thus ice) which would be very, very bad to ingest. It might be obvious, but probably best to avoid ice scooping with glass cups!
- juujian 2y agoBig difference between glass and plastics. Glass is chemical inert while plastics degrades and leaks into everything. See the flavor of a plastic bottle that has been in your car for a while. Some plastics may even resemble stuff that is in your body. It's all processed dinosaur juice after all (actually trees, but whatever).
- onewheeltom 2y agoGlass shards can also be very sharp.
- FredPret 2y agoTrue but glass is very much "outside the body only". Don't want shards in your gut.
- sholladay 2y agoCredit where it is due, if Joe Schwarcz discovered the error “a few days ago” or even within the last week, then he wasn’t the first. The earliest I know of is Adam Ragusea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58HUM40gDPU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58HUM40gDPU
- chias 2y ago> [...] calculates this into a limit for a 60-kilogram adult [...] Are we assuming that children also weigh 60 kilograms, that they don't eat, or that we never liked them anyway?
- mhardcastle 2y ago“However, it is important to note that this does not impact our results,” [lead study author] Liu told National Post." So an order-of-magnitude difference has no impacts on the result? How can that be?
- add-sub-mul-div 2y agoMaybe they're just saving face or don't want to take responsibility for people having unnecessarily thrown away their utensils.
- arboles 2y agoToxic chemicals aside, does anyone else have trouble accepting how little effort entities whose job is to recycle put into recycling? The article explains that recycling facilities throw out black plastic utensils just because the infrared light in sorting machines can't sort it. I've also heard that unscrewed bottle-caps, or other small plastics also fall in the common waste dump at the facility. Perhaps these are the only exceptions. For some of us that have grown up being taught the importance of sorting your trash for the bins by school and TV, it might feel like a betrayal. I would actually like to know the average percentage of the content of domestic recycling bins that the entities on the other side bother to see recycled.
- bjxrn 2y agoThe problem is that plastic recycling in general just doesn't work that well. If you want to make any sort of difference then reducing the amount of plastic you use & throw away is essential.
- dzhiurgis 2y agoIn Auckland/NZ we are not supposed to put lids or items smaller than 5cm into recycling anymore…
- Steve44 2y ago> that recycling facilities throw out black plastic utensils just because the infrared light in sorting machines can't sort it That is very true. The sorting used near-infrared which struggle to detect these black plastics because the carbon black pigments absorb the light. I've quoted information from one our our suppliers which explains it and what they are doing about it. What is carbon black and why should it be eliminated? Carbon black is a pigment widely used in many materials to achieve dark and opaque colours. However, it poses a problem in sorting centers. Indeed, for packaging to be sorted correctly, it must be detected by a sensor known as "near-infrared," abbreviated as NIR. This sensor detects the type of polymer by identifying bright spots on the surface of the packaging and identifies the range of light reflected from the majority of the polymer. However, the presence of carbon black prevents the packaging from being detected because it absorbs the infrared rays emitted by the device. Undetected packaging is therefore not sorted and subsequently not recycled. It will be rejected and sent for incineration or landfill. What are the alternative solutions for dark packaging? As part of the AGEC (The Anti-Waste Law for a Circular Economy) law, voluntary commitments have been made by various stakeholders, including the GUILLIN Group. We have developed solutions for PP and PET with detectable packaging without carbon black. This solution involves eliminating black dyes in favour of dark dyes validated by COTREP (Center of Resources and Expertise on Household Plastic Packaging Recyclability in France). With this material, our packaging is detectable by optical sorting and can therefore be recycled. Some of our ranges are also available in transparent or translucent versions, giving you additional options.
- wruza 2y agoSo glad I didn’t throw out my utensils after the last thread here on HN. Saved nature a little and confronted fears induced by media. Although I must admit that I was scraping the pan with the constant realization that I might die, for more than a month. A reminder to not believe everything you hear about on the internet, even if you feel smart and scientific about an article having a link to some paper or something. Didn’t read tfa back then. Edit: now I read this thread, ugh.
- marssaxman 2y agoWe did throw our black plastic utensils out, but I have no regrets; even if the risk was not as bad as we believed at the time, the scare gave us a great excuse to replace old cheap stuff with nicer wood & silicone implements.
- kcaj 2y agoBad incentives lead to bad science. The authors are from a Seattle non-profit called Toxic Free Future (https://toxicfreefuture.org/mission/https://toxicfreefuture.org/mission/ https://toxicfreefuture.org/mission/https://toxicfreefuture....) Had the mistake been made in the other direction, making the significance of their finding very small, would they have double checked their math? You bet they would have.