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> Ars has reached out to the lead author, Megan Liu, but has not received a response. Liu works for the environmental health advocacy group Toxic-Free Future, w

• phoronixrly 2y ago
  No. The authors state that their conclusion is not altered by the change in calculations. As per TFA: > "This calculation error does not affect the overall conclusion of the paper," the correction reads. The corrected study still ends by saying that the flame retardants "significantly contaminate" the plastic products, which have "high exposure potential."
• ajkjk 2y ago
  How is that clear? Perhaps they are a group that exists to do studies like that.
  • kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
    Groups that exist to do studies like that can be biased toward gainful employment and suppress anything that threatens the revenue stream.
    • ajkjk 2y ago
      And they can also do real studies with plenty of scientific legitimacy. Without evaluating the studies you have no way of knowing if they're biased or not and you're just spreading conspiracy theories.
    • croes 2y ago
      Can but in this case it’s still unnecessarily toxic with 8% of the EPA limit
  • OJFord 2y ago
    That is pretty much my point, yes.
• ternnoburn 2y ago
  80% of maximum fire retardants entering food or 8% of maximum fire retardants entering food are both "too much fire retardants entering food". Seems like the conclusion very obviously still holds, so I'd agree with the study authors here, that error doesn't alter the conclusion.
  • coldpie 2y ago
    > 80% of maximum fire retardants entering food or 8% of maximum fire retardants entering food are both "too much fire retardants entering food". OK, but that's not what this study was about, right? The original claim by the authors was that these utensils brushed up against safe limits. When that turned out to be false, the claim has shifted to the safe limits are too high. But that's a different study. You need to do a safety analysis of exposures to the substance. That's not what their study did.
    • portaouflop 2y ago
      It doesn’t affect the conclusion so who cares what the study was about initially?
      • coldpie 2y ago
        Their conclusion that these utensils are dangerous depended on the results that showed these utensils are at or about the FDA's maximum safe dose. But after correcting the math error, it turns out they're actually about 1/10 of that. That invalidates their conclusion.
        • ternnoburn 2y ago
          1/10th is still high? And doses aren't a on/off amount. It's not like there's no risk until you hit 100% and then there's max risk. Exposure is exposure. There's a lethal dose for alcohol, but having 1/10th of that dose can still strongly negatively impact me.
          • 2y ago
• croes 2y ago
  So instead of 80% toxic limit it’s „only“ 8%. Sorry but I don’t want any toxic material in the tools I use for food.
  • tbrownaw 2y ago
    Fun fact: oxygen is toxic in high enough concentrations.
    • 7bit 2y ago
      Wtf bro. So is 0 oxygen intake. But 0 toxic intake isnt, so it's fair to say you want 0.
      • tbrownaw 2y ago
        Are you familiar with the phrase "the dose makes the poison"?
        • 7bit 2y ago
          [flagged]
  • OJFord 2y ago
    It's not 'toxic material', it has a toxic dose. Too much water and you die. You do want some percentage of that level of water, though.
    • croes 2y ago
      The brominated flame retardants are inherently toxic and are therefore considered toxic materials.
      • EasyMark 2y ago
        Especially since it can build up in the body. Kind of like some vitamins you can have 1000% of the RDA because they are very water-soluble and go through like a sieve anyway, but others get toxic much quicker because they are fat soluble and get stored in fat cells for the long haul.
• jcranmer 2y ago
  On the most charitable level, the "huge math error" occurred in the calculation of the FDA's limits on exposure, so if the group feels that the FDA set its limits too high and the amount of chemicals being leached is worrying, then the math error really doesn't affect their conclusion at all. But digging into the study, it becomes clear that the authors are really reaching in their methodology--subjecting utensils to rather implausible scenarios (when was the last time you microwaved your sushi tray?)--to try to get some samples that would exceed the limit. The hyperbolic media coverage of "ditch all your black plastics" isn't really sustained when the research finds that just a few specimens, when subjected to unusually high heat stresses, managed to just barely cross the incorrectly-calculated FDA threshold (itself likely set at a factor of a tenth to a hundredth of the lowest threshold observed to cause issues in previous studies!). That the authors aren't willing to disavow that media coverage is more telling then their unwillingness to adjust their conclusions in response to their math error.
  • tivert 2y ago
    > subjecting utensils to rather implausible scenarios (when was the last time you microwaved your sushi tray?) That's not implausible. Sushi actually tastes better a little warm than chilled. Also I think it would make sense to test all food trays the same way, as some of those do get heated quite a bit (e.g. I've microwaved take-out noodles in plastic trays very similar to a take-out sushi trays). It's not like it's plausible that there's some special sushi-tray supply chain where they've carefully determined they can safely get away with using e-waste plastic. It's almost certain that industry consists of many takeout tray companies that each make a whole line of takeout trays for different uses using the same raw materials (e.g. the sushi cart at my employer sold sushi and hot noodle soup in black plastic trays, which plausibly could come form the same manufacturer).
    • jiggawatts 2y ago
      I microwave my sushi for precisely this reason — for ten or twenty seconds at most — not half an hour.
  • EasyMark 2y ago