Media reports that black plastic kitchen utensils contain dangerous levels of a flame retardant – decabromodiphenyl ether or decaBDE caused people across the U.S. to throw out their perfectly good kitchen utensils. What caused this scare, and how did bad science contribute to it?
This issue is much broader than bad science; it concerns balancing minimal risks from chemicals with the much wider benefits of pro-environmental activities, such as recycling.
DecaBDE is part of a family of chemicals, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), that consist of 209 individual chemicals used as flame retardants in a variety of products because they can help stop small fires from becoming large fires, preventing injuries and deaths. Flame retardants are particularly important in electronics because the components of the product – circuit boards, transformers, and batteries are a potential ignition source. Flame retardants prevent sparks or overheating of an electronic product from becoming a serious fire incident.
Human exposure to chemicals, such as decaBDE in electronics and other products, is extremely limited. Although miniscule amounts can be released over time, the only way for any measurable exposure to occur is for a product to be heated to high temperatures and allowed to mix with the air. Even this exposure is extremely small, in the nanogram (ng) range.
A nanogram is a billion times smaller (10-9) than a gram and almost a trillion times smaller than a pound. This can be written as a unit in the 9th decimal place: 0.000000001 g. To visualize it, imagine you slice a single grain of rice into 25,000,000 parts. One of the 25,000,000 parts weighs 1 nanogram.
Due to health concerns, the EPA banned most uses of decaBDE in 2009, with manufacturers agreeing to stop its manufacture by 2013. In 2021, the EPA banned the manufacture, processing, and distribution of the remaining uses of decaBDE, and in 2024, the EPA granted compliance extensions for decaBDE used in wire insulation in nuclear power plants and imposed new workplace protection requirements for products containing decaBDE.
The EPA 2021 ban excluded the recycling of decaBDE-containing plastic products. The reason for the exclusion was that decaBDE is typically found at very low levels in plastic products, and banning the recycling of plastics containing decaBDE would require it to be identified through prohibitively expensive and complicated testing. This would raise the price of recycling, and EPA determined that it was “overly burdensome and not practicable.”
Black Plastic
Of course a lawsuit followed, what I would describe as a sensible decision by the EPA. In December 2024, EarthJustice, representing the Yurok Tribe, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, the Center for Environmental Transformation, and the Consumer Federation of America, sued the EPA, saying that EPA is not adequately regulating decaBDE because it allows recycled decaBDE into everyday products, such as black plastic kitchen utensils and containers.
Black plastic kitchen utensils and containers are the focus of concern because recycled electronic waste is often a brownish color, and black pigments are added to products containing this recycled material for aesthetic purposes. [1]
Several media reports followed the lawsuit, including an article in CNN that quoted scary statistics about people being exposed to high levels of decaBDE from black plastic kitchen utensils, such as spatulas and slotted spoons. CNN also quoted Toxic-Free Future,
“Replace your plastic kitchen utensils with stainless steel options or choose plastic-free items to help reduce your overall exposure to harmful additives and plastic.”
Toxic-Free Future (a partner of Earthjustice, the key plaintiff in the decaBDE lawsuit) also authored the article, cited in CNN and other media reports, that found “high” levels of decaBDE in black household products. Of the nine kitchen utensils tested for decaBDE, three contained levels below the detection limit, and the other six contained decaBDE at levels ranging from 50 milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg) to 11,900 mg/kg (in one sushi take-out container).
Heating a utensil is the only way to release a measurable amount of the chemical from the plastic into the air or food.
To err is human; to apologize, not so much
The authors estimated that a cooking utensil could transfer 34,700 nanograms (ng) of decaBDE per day based on regular use when cooking with hot oil and serving hot food. They compared this level to the amount considered safe by the EPA – the EPA Reference Dose of 7,000 ng per kilogram of body weight per day. They concluded that the transfer of decaBDE at 34,700 ng is close to EPA’s safe level of 42,000 ng per day (for an average adult body weight of 60 kg).
However, a sharp scientist did the math and found an error: multiplying 7,000 by 60 kg results in a safe level of 420,000 ng per day (instead of 42,000 ng per day, per the article), meaning that the calculated exposure was more than 10-fold less than EPA’s safe level. The authors alerted to the error, wrote,
“We miscalculated the reference dose for a 60 kg adult, initially estimating it at 42,000 ng/day instead of the correct value of 420,000 ng/day.”
They dutifully revised their statement in the article to say that their calculated daily intake of decaBDE is an order of magnitude lower than the EPA safe level. However, the authors did not change the conclusions of their paper, still saying that flame retardants “significantly contaminate” plastic products that have “high exposure potential. ”
This is a significant math error; not adjusting their conclusion makes one question the peer review process. An article in Scientific American quoted the author of the paper rationalizing rather than changing the conclusions,
“the figure with the miscalculation was contextualizing the levels we saw in the study, thinking that it would be helpful to people. This was really just one part of our study that isn’t even part of our key findings.”
All these excuses hide in plain sight the fact that there is no health risk from minuscule amounts of decaBDE. Legacy and digital media ran with the story of significant health risk, even after the calculation error was acknowledged. The article is amplified in the lawsuit that contends that, due to the health risk, there should be no recycling of plastics containing decaBDE.
Unless you regularly stir molten lava with your spatula, the EPA came to the correct conclusions, and there is no need for anyone to throw out their black kitchen utensils. Instead of panicking over phantom dangers, let’s focus on the bigger picture: balancing minimal risks from trace chemicals with the significant benefits of recycling our growing burden of electronics.
[1] One European study focused on flame retardants in black plastic recycled items. It examined two recycled red and green travel mugs for comparison purposes and found no decaBDE or other flame retardants in the colored mugs.
