Recently there was a bit of a panic in the media regarding a very common item in kitchens all around the world: black plastic utensils used for flipping, scooping and otherwise handling our food while preparing culinary delights. The claim was that the recycled plastic which is used for many of these utensils leak a bad kind of flame-retardant chemical, decabromodiphenyl ether, or BDE-209, at a rate that would bring it dangerously close to the maximum allowed intake limit for humans. Only this claim was incorrect because the researchers who did the original study got their calculation of the intake limit wrong by a factor of ten.
This recent example is emblematic of how simple mistakes can combine with a reluctance to validate conclusions can lead successive consumers down a game of telephone where the original text may already have been wrong, where each node does not validate the provided text, and suddenly everyone knows that using certain kitchen utensils, microwaving dishes or adding that one thing to your food is pretty much guaranteed to kill you.
How does one go about defending oneself from becoming an unwitting factor in creating and propagating misinformation?
Making Mistakes Is Human
We all make mistakes, as nobody of us is perfect. Our memory is lossy, our focus drifts, and one momentary glitch is all it takes to make that typo, omit carrying the one, or pay attention to the road during that one crucial moment. As a result we have invented many ways to compensate for our flawed brains, much of it centered around double-checking, peer-validation and ways to keep an operator focused with increasingly automated means to interfere when said operator did not act in time.
The error in the black plastic utensils study is an example of what appears to be an innocent mistake that didn’t get caught before publication, and then likely the assumption was made by media publications – as they rushed to get that click-worthy scoop written up – that the original authors and peer-review process had caught any major mistakes. Unfortunately the original study by Megan Liu et al. in Chemosphere listed the BDE-209 reference dose for a 60 kg adult as 42,000 ng/day, when the reference dose per kg body weight is 7,000 ng.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that 60 times 7,000 makes 420,000 ng/day, and as it’s at the core of the conclusion being drawn, it ought to have been checked and double-checked alongside the calculated daily intake from contaminated cooking utensils at 34,700 ng/day. This ‘miscalculation’ as per the authors changed the impact from a solid 80% of the reference dose to not even 10%, putting it closer to the daily intake from other sources like dust. One factor that also played a role here, as pointed out by Joseph Brean in the earlier linked National Post article, is that the authors used nanograms, when micrograms would have sufficed and cut three redundant zeroes off each value.
Of note with the (human) brain is that error detection and correction are an integral part of learning, and this process can be readily detected with an EEG scan as an event-related potential (ERP), specifically an error-related negativity (ERN). This is something that we consciously experience as well, such as when we perform an action like typing some text and before we have a chance to re-read what we wrote we already know that we made a mistake. Other common examples include being aware of misspeaking even as the words leave your mouth and that sense of dread before an action you’re performing doesn’t quite work out as expected.
An interesting case study here involves these ERNs in the human medial frontal cortex as published in Neuron back in 2018 by Zhongzheng Fu et al. (with related Cedars-Sinai article). In this experimental setup volunteers were monitored via EEG as they were challenged with a Stroop task. During this task the self-monitoring of errors plays a major role as saying the word competes with saying the color, a struggle that’s visible in the EEG and shows the active error-correcting neurons to be located in regions like the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). A good explanation can be found in this Frontiers for Young Minds article.
The ERN signal strength changes with age, becoming stronger as our brain grows and develops, including pertinent regions like the cingulate cortex. Yet as helpful as this mechanism is, mistakes will inevitably slip through and is why proofreading text requires a fresh pair of eyes, ideally a pair not belonging to the person who originally wrote said text, as they may be biased to pass over said mistakes.
Cognitive Biases
Although there is at this point no evidence to support the hypothesis that we are just brains in jars gently sloshing about in cerebrospinal fluid as sentient robots feed said brains a simulated reality, effectively this isn’t so far removed from the truth. Safely nestled inside our skulls we can only obtain a heavily filtered interpretation of the world around us via our senses, each of which throw away significant amounts of data in e.g. the retina before the remaining data percolates through their respective cortices and subsequent neural networks until whatever information is left seeps up into the neocortex where our consciousness resides as a somewhat haphazard integration of data streams.
Along the way there are countless (subconscious) processes that can affect how we consciously experience this information seepage. These are collectively called ‘cognitive biases‘, and include common types like confirmation bias. This particular type of bias is particularly prevalent as humans appear to be strongly biased towards seeking out confirmation of existing beliefs, rather than seeking out narratives that may challenge said beliefs.
Unsurprisingly, examples of confirmation bias are everywhere, ranging from the subtle (e.g. overconfidence and faulty reasoning in e.g. diagnosing a defect) to the extreme, such as dogmatic beliefs affecting large groups where any challenge to the faulty belief is met by equally extreme responses. Common examples here are anti-vaccination beliefs – where people will readily believe that vaccines cause everything from cancer to autism – and anti-radiation beliefs which range from insisting that electromagnetic radiation from powerlines, microwave ovens, WiFi, etc. is harmful, to believing various unfounded claims about nuclear power and the hazards of ionizing radiation.
In the case of our black plastic kitchen utensils some people in the audience likely already had a pre-existing bias towards believing that plastic cooking utensils are somehow bad, and for whom the faulty calculation thus confirmed this bias. They would have had little cause to validate the claim and happily shared it on their social media accounts and email lists as an irrefutable fact, resulting in many of these spatulas and friends finding themselves tossed into the bin in a blind panic.
Trust But Verify
Obviously you cannot go through each moment of the day validating every single piece of information that comes your way. The key here is to validate and verify where it matters. After reading such an alarmist article about cooking utensils in one’s local purveyor of journalistic integrity and/or social media, it behooves one to investigate these claims and possibly even run the numbers oneself, before making your way over to the kitchen to forcefully rip all of those claimed carriers of cancer seeds out of their respective drawers and hurling them into the trash bin.
The same kind of due diligence is important when a single, likely biased source makes a particular claim. Especially in this era where post-truth often trumps intellectualism, it’s important to take a step back when a claim is made and consider it in a broader context. While this miscalculation with flame-retardant levels in black kitchen utensils won’t have much of an impact on society, the many cases of clear cognitive bias in daily life as well as their exploitation by the unscrupulous brings to mind Carl Sagan’s fears about a ‘celebration of ignorance’ as expressed in his 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.
With a populace primed to respond to every emotionally-charged sound bite, we need these candles more than ever.
Statistics show that 5 out of 4 researchers have denied that their data was wrong.
Dang it, the black plastic spatula already went into landfill.
Fortunately I have a red plastic one. Surely it’s much safer.
It’s certainly faster!
You missed the point. Regardless of the levels, black plastic is made from recycled electronics products that contain fire retardants. End of story.
no, I think you missed the point, red is definitely faster
Black plastic is made from polymer resin and colorant. That colorant may or may not be ground up thermoset resins from recycled toner cartridges, and the toner itself which is another polymer resin powder (with colorant).
The study that caused this is from an “institute” that is somehow advocating polysilanes instead of polyolefins as the way to a “plastic free future” and is supportered by the usual marketers of “plastic free” stuff made of…plastic.
The lead author lists this as her only publication after her masters’ degree in toxicology – nothing from her thesis, which is unusual.
Geez, there you go again – putting in the work, verifying credentials, providing context.. how the heck is a modern person supposed to believe in nonsense these days with folks like you around?
😬
I thought it was more powerful, but yellow could be quicker?
you need the orange utensils, the ones original from the 70s, in “cadmium orange” ;)
what about “radium green”?
Just get a metal spatula and a ceramic-lined cast iron pan instead of having your pan lined with teflon plastic and your utensils made entirely of who knows what plastic with who knows what additives
cermet coatings are nothing but awesome. they have doubled, in some cases tripled, the life of my pans. i still use plastic utensils, because such coatings do sometimes chip if you are being careless.
i find people touch the food with the spatula way too much anyway and leave it in the pan while its cooking. dont do this, you will ruin the food and your spatula.
This is what I did. I got sick of having to throw out Teflon pans because certain people cannot seem to stop themselves from putting metal in there one way or another, and so everything that wasn’t stainless steel went away and now everything is stainless steel, cast iron, or earthenware. I had one black plastic spatula, and it will not be missed just as I won’t miss all the other plastic utensils that were all replaced with stainless steel versions. Plastic bowls and plates are next. Everything is about to get tossed. I may not be able to completely avoid consuming microplastics, but I can certainly reduce them a lot.
Anti vacine people ? People have the right to choose, as you have clearly said researchers / scientists can make mistakes. It should be up to the individual if they choose to or not to be injected, and it is not up to those who have chosen to be to call the others fools and backward.
Rather than a confirmation bias against black kitchen utensils, I suspect the issue is the bias caused by the very clear financial and status rewards for study authors towards writing exciting new discoveries. And of journals towards publishing said “discoveries”. And of the media towards publicising them.
No researcher, journal, or paper (tabloid or other) ever got rich from publishing: “totally expected: researchers find everyday item no one thought is dangerous is in fact not dangerous”.
To be fair, some researchers do get paid to confirm expected, non-revolutionary results, but not many, and none get famous for it.
And if you lie the right way you get pretty damn (in)famous.
Like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield?useskin=vector
Science journalists have a cognitive bias against the existence of financial bias. And also against the existence of social status effects, but only for their own social stratum (they can’t perceive themselves as a separate class or milieu).
No, not really. In fact they talk about how these are problems frequently… Unless by “journalist” you mean the recent copy writers who are churning articles as far as possible for ad-filled web sites and rarely check it their LLM- derived text makes any sense.
These are two different groups of people, on which is growing smaller and the other which has no introspection whatever, they can’t afford it.
Calculation mistakes have been around for ages. Early on someone calculated the iron content of spinach but screwed up the calculation and gave spinach 10x more iron than actual. Spinach-loving Popeye was born from the mistake
And eating carrots enable you to see in the dark, not RADAR. What’s up doc?
Based on the taste, I’m biased toward believing the original number.
Coffee bad, coffee good. Aspirin bad, Aspirin good, eggs bad, eggs good. Endless flip-flop-flips. You can often manipulate stats to get the out-come you like. Mistakes of course just add to the confusion. So it goes. Now spatulas. All in the name of science… which has a habit of becoming ‘policy’/directives by governments…
I myself have been known to pour over the coffee research and waffle on the health benefits of bacon and sausage. I also have another topic on which I flip… eggs.
Dang, now I’m hungry…
Which spatula do I grab?
The handiest one that does the job. Life is a sexually transmitted disease that is 100% fatal
But clamydia is preferable to HIV.
This is exactly correct and is the problem.
It isn’t that people don’t trust facts. The problem is that the “experts” keep changing their minds on the facts or what those facts mean (mistakes just make this worse).
And, thus, trust in “experts” drops. As we must rely upon others to do the research and tell us what it means, trust is paramount.
The problem is therefore a lack of trust in experts, especially in this modern time period where an expert can be found to back any construct you can imagine.
“Experts say…” is no longer a meaningful statement, it is, sadly, for many, a signal for “fraud alert”.
““Experts say…” is no longer a meaningful statement, it is, sadly, for many, a signal for “fraud alert”.”
I blame the TV stations, in parts. They always have their own random “experts”.
What’s also often negleted is the life experience of certain people.
People who have lived for decades next to a problematic nuclear reactor may have a different experience/knowledge than a professor who never did set foot next to it.
In an ideal world, both of the would have a dialog and would discuss the matter in a civil way on eye level.
A lot of people are still completely in denial about how much credibility has been recently set on fire for the sake of power grabs and political derangement. If these people are still in denial, they simply won’t learn. The big sort has already happened, they are stuck where they are and now can simply be defeated and removed from any position of relevance so they don’t do any more harm.
Also, as an after-effect of the big sort, people on either side will interpret this statement as being about the other side
I like how certain phrases can immediately tell that a person should be disregarded, quite the time saver.
They are allowed to change their minds for the right reasons, but people have recently seen them do so for reason which were not related to having better or new information. Even laymen are actually quite good at detecting capriciousness or insincerity. Fact-obsessed autistic types ironically have a hard problem with social tells, so when they attempt to lie to people they disregard this and give the game away like a bad poker player.
A person with bad social skills often won’t produce the right social cues even when they’re telling the truth, so a normal person will often think they’re lying even when they’re not. It’s only sometimes that they accidentally give themselves away, and that could happen to anyone. This can be seen in social games, like the ones where there’s a group goal but one or two people are secretly enemies to the group and everyone gets to vote on who the traitor is. Generally, people who fit in are mistakenly voted out a lot less than people who don’t, even though roles are random. Further, sometimes a good poker player isn’t normal – they’re good enough to make bluffs that feel more genuine than their actual genuine reactions. And a lot of times, something that’s aimed to sell something to a normal person rings hollow to someone who doesn’t resonate with some of the aspects – someone who doesn’t like to make eye contact or shake hands isn’t going to build rapport with a car salesman who does that. So nobody’s got a monopoly on detecting falsity.
No no no no no no no. The entire point of science is to attempt to figure something out, by doing an experiment. Then someone else comes along and either says that doesn’t seem right OR let me confirm this result using another method and even possibly expand on this idea or completely turn it on its head. Yes science journals have massive integrity problems right now due to competing incentives, which leads to publishing of results which were not sufficiently vetted, but honestly thst is part of the scientific process. Someone else comes along with contradictory results months later even when good science is done. It only signifies and incomplete understanding of the issue.
The main culprits in this issue are 1. The media for their sensationalist and definitive headlines as clickbait and then 2. The people who then take these sensationalist headlines and regurgitate them to their friends as if they are fact when they don’t ever go and read the paper itself. There are countless examples of a sensationalist headline that spreads through the public when the paper it was based on never said anything close to aa definitive or and even say further research must be done to determine the effects of these other variables on this result.
Science Is a long and iterative process with many false starts and straight up grifters who take advantage of this. My point is that you blame the experts for saying things they either didn’t say or were not qualified to say without getting any info on what other experts say about the topic when you read a news article about a new study that says xyz.
If a scientific result appears at all groundbreaking and or especially if it tells you what you want to hear, then go read the paper itself. It gets easier and easier to identify where the fraud occured if there is any. Either by the media (sensationalism or confirming what you already want to believe) or by the scientists themselves (definitive language in conclusions or discussion and very light on details in the methodology and data analysis.)
Tldr is the experts are not to blame (if they are experts and not frauds) for any of this perceived flip flopping or whatever makes you not trust the experts. It is the media companies wanting engagement and inability of the average person to identify when they are being manipulated.
The entire anti science movement is a result of ignorant people being led away from science they didn’t bother to understand by people with motivations to make science appear useless. Ugh that was a rant sorry
A good expert will know what it would take to change their mind – as a made up example, “I will believe that some form of encryption is insecure whenever I hear of a flaw or that compute has gotten powerful enough to break it”.
A bad “expert” will be more convincing to ignorant laypeople like you’re describing because year after year they confidently recommend the exact same thing to all their clients, even once it’s long since been outdated. I’d much rather the experts were always debating the best options for things, even if the prevailing opinion changes back and forth like the wind. That way I can decide what to do depending which direction it ends up going.
Not flip-flopping isn’t a good enough indication of correctness, and worse, expecting to be told what to believe once as a child and to never have to revise that belief is as common as it is foolish. People constantly disbelieve experts based on what they misremember from high school classes that they misunderstood 50 years ago. Sometimes being right takes actual effort, and if you can’t or won’t put that effort in, then unfortunately you can’t expect it to all magically work out for you. If you do put in effort, you’ll still sometimes have to make imperfect best guesses like everyone else; that’s life.
In the case of eggs, aspirin, and coffee, I believe the anti-whichever positions have generally been loud but small, while the majority still figured they were generally acceptable. I certainly never heard that the consensus was that any of the three were universally bad, only that people had identified effects that may apply to some people and be worth considering if you’re unusual or not assuming good health to start with. E.G. strain on gut lining with aspirin, increased heartrate and sleep disruption from caffeine, debated nutrition or cholesterol effects with eggs depending how they’re prepared, etc.
Coffee good. Aspirin (willow tree) good. Eggs good. Plastic bad
“Plastic bad” is the latest drum to pound, just like the other 3 you mentioned. Resource extraction to produce plastics? Has limits and downsides. End-of-life issues for plastics? Definitely has limits. On the other hand, would you rather accidentally drop a plastic container on your floor with a toddler around, or a glass bottle? Which costs more to transport, glass or plastic? Which takes more energy to produce in the first place, and to actually recycle? Under what circumstances are microplastics bad, how do they compare to the breakdown products of the alternatives, what are the other alternatives?
Everyone wants a simple answer, like “formaldehyde adhesives in wood products are bad”, “cutting trees is bad”, “paper bags are bad”. Working in forest products research, I can provide you a number of case studies where every single one of these statements are wrong in most of the situations that people actually use the product. And I won’t get started on my chief hobby horse “All Natural”, except to say that snake venom and botulism toxin are “All Natural”.
And I note that the affiliation of the corresponding author of the article is “Toxic-Free-Future”. The published erratum notes that the change in order of magnitude doesn’t change their conclusion.
“Plastic bad” is a short enough statement to tell that it is meant as a generalization, and has generalized applications. Digging into it with edge cases and nuanced exceptions belies an attempt to ignore the fact that it was intended to be a general statement, not an overarching one.
It’s a bad trait to ignore the fat middle of a bell curve by pointing out the skinny tails on either side of it
the east germans invented unbreakable glass ware in the early 80´s- sadly no one was interested to produce it, since it basically removed the returning customer scenario.
If taking lasagna to work one time stains a tupperware red, then the plastic is too porous. I’ll use the glass version instead and keep the kid away from it if it breaks. If leaving a water bottle in the car in summer gives it a funny flavor, forget it, I’ll carry a thermos and refill it. And glass? Paper? I’ll reuse the glass bottle or jar tons of times before I need another, same with cloth bags; paper I no longer need to wrap around books and things like we always used to do, but I’ll still use it a few times if I can, and it won’t be that bad. Cardboard boxes can be reused too, a few times, especially if you’re not going to mail them. No need for a lot of kinds of plastic we end up using – bags that aren’t ziplock, clamshells inside clamshells, etc.
I once ordered 4 aaa-sized rechargeable batteries for $10. Each battery had a plastic wrapper, and then each 3 were inside a plastic ziplock (the second group being one battery and two dummy batteries), and then each ziplock went inside the crappiest possible flashlight (for shipping reasons) and then each flashlight went inside its own ziplock (and/or its own little paper box), and then those two units went inside another bag to combine them, and then that finally went with the shipping label and warranty card or something into a bubble mailer. It was nuts.
even just limiting my judgement to the aesthetic / sensual / experiential qualities of coffee, i can’t decide if i love it or hate it
Are you ignoring all the things that were determined to be bad and stayed bad, such as asbestos, smoking, arsenic in wallpaper, radium in paint, etc etc? Or all the things consensus said was good and still are, like vegetables and fresh air?
If I correctly recall: coffee good, coffee bad, coffee good, coffee bad, coffee good then coffee bad then coffee good. Maybe it’s back to bad. I just stopped caring and just drink it every day. Whatever.
Very interesting article !
I only use inox steel or wood kitchen utensils.
“How does one go about defending oneself from becoming an unwitting factor in creating and propagating misinformation?”
Media compentency. We already learned in school to question things we read/see/hear in the news and do our own researchers (do take them with a grain of salt in short).
For example, by comparion information available in both books and the internet.
That’s why we roll our eyes and feel sadness when our parents do fall for fake news on the internet.
The internet never was a safe place or reliable source.
That’s why we still have professional journalist who do research check things in the world.
Unfortunately, our parents never have learnt to double check on informationen. They grew up with news papers and TV and never had to doubt.
Unfortunately, the internet isn’t like that. Historically, it’s a chaotic place.
Expecting that everyone (or even just a plurality of people) will have the time and competence in their lives to become masters of spotting subtle information and emotional manipulation techniques in the media is deeply unrealistic. You may as well expect that every citizen will become competent enough to check the research of all the PhDs in the world themselves.
If you have media worthy of high trust, that is a very very nice thing for your society. Our current media isn’t worthy of high trust, including the “legacy” ones which have been caught lying for various reasons too many times to continue their good name in the eyes of anybody except the fanatically convinced
It was a different time and place, probably. 🤷♂️
Back then, we were told by our teachers that (then young) Wikipedia wasn’t reliable and that we should also consider checking other sources of information.
Such as books in our public city library (free access and computer use for students) or do at least consider respectable online sources such as Encyclopædia Britannica.
Our teachers also encouraged us to teach our parents about media compentency, because they knew how computer unsavvy they are.
(To be honest our teachers were not much better better, except for those nerdy math/physics/chemistry/IT teachers in IT class.)
All in all, our teachers always wanted that we think on our selves, even question politics and the possible propaganda of the state (probably because of WW2 background).
They were always happy when students had an intelligent question to ask.
But even there’s an exception. One of my teachers used to say “there’s no such thing like stupid questions, just stupid answers!”
That isn’t the problem, errors will be made that part is inevitable and even an intentionally bad faith article is only the fault of the tiny number of people who created it and at a stretch their bosses for failure to identify this isn’t good. Where the problem actually lies is when the errors are made, but instead of owning up, correcting etc they double down publishing factually incorrect ‘proof’ etc or actively ignore the error ‘to save face’ so only those who can afford the time and effort to study multiple sources will have any hope of filtering out the misinformation.
It is absolutely the problem when the errors were intentional and bad faith as you mentioned, and have been repeated often enough without proper or loud enough corrections. Through this you can very reliably discern the authorial intent of an entire organization, or even a “movement” for lack of a better term. So yes, basically what you say, thank you.
How many times have we seem mud thrown against the wall to see what sticks? You see that all the time. Thing is there is always a segment of population that will grab onto it and just ‘believe’ it . Even when the eventual retraction is given (usually in small print or after the effect …) .
“Media worthy of high trust” just doesn’t exist and never did. All media is created by people, and people are various levels of trustworthy, even within their own lifetimes. In the past you just didn’t know you were being lied to.
Personally I think it’s better to know you have a bunch of untrustworthy sources and doubt the liea than to think you have a trustworthy source and believe the liea blindly.
I generally agree but there have been major shifts throughout history in the degree of this phenomena
“our parents never have learnt to double check on informationen”
I thought all you young whippersnappers got all your news from Tic Tok
Now I believe I’m supposed to tell you to get off my Lawn.
This was in the 90s/early 2000s when the web was still healthy.
Before (un)social media happened.
Our teachers told us to always double check information.
When we wrote essays for school we had to to mention our sources, too.
And it was recommended to back things up through multiple sources, not just one.
That was same generation of teachers that said we must be able to do math without calculators, because we can’t have them always with us.
Gen Z and A is a different story, I suppose.
They grew up in an always-connected-world.
Unlike those of us who still had used an Amiga or DOS and knew dial-up modems.
But yeah, to the old “farts” that’s probably all the same. 🤷♂️
I’m old and have lived plenty of years in the pre-internet age, before your life was dominated by a horrible black glass rectangle in your pocket. It was better back then, but the fundamental problem did still exist
I don’t know where your parents live or how old they are, but I am 62 years old, and probably know more truth than a good portion of younger people. So don’t go throwing statements like “our parents” or generation whatever. One thing I have over younger people is wisdom. You may not ever agree with me…. wait…. of course you will. When you have it…. grasshopper
A popular statistics and social science blog (Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science) just today had a good writeup of much of the press that got the story wrong and then how well they did at correcting their readers: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/12/19/how-did-the-press-do-on-that-black-spatula-story/
End result, they didn’t do a good job. Many didn’t reference the press release from Dr. Schwarcz at (https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking-health-and-nutrition/are-black-plastic-spatulas-and-serving-spoons-safe-use). This write-up skipped his work too! Many also didn’t link or mention the National Post article at https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/black-plastic (which this write-up thankfully did). Many news articles appear to avoid mentioning or linking to any perceived competitor, instead rewriting (plagiarizing?) their work as their own.
So, good job Hackaday for at least linking to one of the early news article. Do better next time by mentioning who actually discovered the fault. And maybe the next time an academic gets things wrong, see how it’s reported or corrected by newspapers and the media.
Wait, so black cooking utensils DON’T ooze BDE?
They do, just less than reported.
Feel free to use your black plastic utensils, but when it comes time to replace them maybe get wood ones.
Sure because the surface treatments and resins in wooden utensil are of zero health risk, and they are all made of a food grade tree… Ultimately all of life is exposure to nasty crap in one way or another, that can’t be avoided, so all about prioritising the meaningful risks and trying to solve the problems you can actually solve.
For instance a bad build up of CO2 from poor indoor ventilation can be ‘fixed’ by some definitions. But it is entirely unrealistic to expect indoor air to never deviate from outdoor on the CO2 count and attempts to do so would just cause other problems – I’d quite like to keep some heat in space, and the desk detritus actually staying on the desk etc.
In this case from the data available right now worrying about your utensil is just not worth effort assuming it is from a reputable brand etc so made with some degree of quality control, rather than the cheapest crappiest source materials that can formed into a spatula shaped object…
If your wooden utensils have surface treatments and resins in them, they were never food-safe to begin with. They should really just be a piece of wood.
Woods are full of natural resins, many of which are pretty bad for you and just being wood doesn’t make it safe as some species of wood are actively very toxic…
And most wooden utensils do have surface treatments, and it makes sense really, makes them look better, survive longer etc – just hopefully a good food grade oil is used rather than just the cheapest thing that makes it look good.
Yes, but only if you boil them in oil for fifteen minutes. Oh, and only two of the samples were at the reported level and one of those was from a sushi plate, so not likely to be boiled in oil.
If asbestos, TEL, cigarettes, and lead pipes were all invented today these same people would be telling you to trust the studies saying they’re fine. They’d waggle their fingers and tut-tut at you for “spreading dangerous misinformation.”
Looking at health trends, hormonal balance, mental health statistics, hell even just looking at photographs of crowds of people from fifty years ago… I don’t know which specific environmental factor it is, but if you don’t see that something we have invented between back then and now is causing problems then YOU ARE SIMPLY A STUPID PERSON NOT WORTHY OF BEING TAKEN SERIOUSLY. Sorry to put it bluntly, but that’s all there is to it.
And in every single case of a massive industrial environmental toxin being discovered, scientists for hire have been corrupted and proceeded to voluntarily disrespect the scientific process, abusing it as a fig-leaf for lies. There is nothing really preventing this from happening. Science cannot defend itself, it is simply a process carried out by human beings, and those human beings can still lie. They can lie in large groups for money. It’s not that unusual.
It is self-correcting, but the correction takes time. Often a lifetime or more. And nobody is a magical arbiter of truth; nobody can really say what is “misinformation” until this process shakes out.
remember, the sun being the center of the solar system used to be called misinformation. its usually hard to tell how plausible or well verified new information is, but it is very easy to identify a silver tongued devil on a power trip.
Luckily our current silver-tongued devils are not quite the men their predecessors were, and are pretty incompetent about keeping people from seeing them for being slimeballs.
They are so bad at interpersonal stuff that they don’t even understand that they’ve been rumbled, so they keep on acting like the only problem is a debate about facts and details long after everyone mentally sorted them as charlatans years ago. They will continue refusing to accept that their actions had consequences, and attempt to shame people into belief using embarrassingly outdated manipulation techniques over and over again
… we need a 6-foot distance and wear masks… nuf said…
I will have to disagree with your statements about the median person being capable of seeing the obvious devil in the picture.
The current political climate worldwide shows that a good chunk of the population will go toward any opinion that rejects any form of personal discomfort, or can blame on another population their problems, scientific consensus be damned. And it doesn’t help that those slime balls are buying eall media they see
I suspect the biggest thing we have invented is entirely sedentary but often high stress lives, largely fuelled by rather poor nutrionally fast food being very much the normal. There are absolutely other issues though, many of them.
That is certainly a huge problem, yes. One that is part and parcel to industrial convenience
since i switched from teflon to cermet coatings in my cookware i have to worry a lot less about surface abrasion. though it is possible to chip the surface in your food (this usually happens in the sink though when people carelessly throw in silverware from across the room). you can use metal utensils carefully but i still use the black plastic that’s been in my kitchen drawer for the last 20 years just to be safe. i have metal but i only use those on the grill.
if the science on this was anything but preliminary, they wouldn’t manufacture or allow sale of them in the first place. the lawyers would bite down on that instantly.
Good policy. Metal and ceramic have very long safety records; whatever current plastic+additives that cookware has been made with during the past five or ten or twenty years does not, and people saying otherwise are obvious liars or rubes
im actually more concerned over the silicone utensils over a spatula ive been using for 20 years. for low temperature applications these are fine. frosting cakes, etc. im still wary to put them in the oven. i have a silicone bbq brush (and another one with plastic bristles), and i have my doubts about using that over an open flame.
in my internal risk assessment arithmetic i still consider cooking with a plastic spatula to be significantly less risky than leaving the house or crossing the street. especially how much time i spend sanding 3d prints and resin casts without a respirator and using power tools without the proper safety equipment or smoking what they sell in the dispensary. im not about to give myself a panic attack over a microscopic risk factor, especially when i willingly take much larger risks on a daily basis.
I do have questions about the heavy metal dopants used to cure certain kinds of silicone, but I admittedly haven’t delved into that subject far enough to really know much about it
Still would prefer to minimize intake of persistent, carcinogenic substances… same as with all PFAS containing stuff like non-stick cookware, better to just avoid it.
Plastics for food was a mistake. From micro plastics to plasticizers there’s a bunch of issues. IMHO plastics will be seen as toxic years from now. You only need plastic utensils for nonstick cookware though.
Stainless steel and cast iron are superior in every way including health. But you need to cook with a bit of fat and some finesse to make stuff not stick.
A very obvious mistake that requires a real snake to deny.. The oceans will be clogged with food plastic for a thousand years. These same people are constantly on the verge of hyperventilation about climate change denial, where’s the concern about denial of plastic pollution? I guess they don’t have a big shady NGO network for that one yet
Also try ceramic-coated cast iron; in my experience it’s even easier than teflon
im also quote fond of my pyrex. if its good enough for the lab its good enough for my kitchen.
Too bad its so hard these days to find the real PYREX(TM) and not the reinvented brand Pyrex(tm), made with less temperature-resistant glass.
I did enjoy the old TV commercial showing an aluminum pot melting in a PYREX cooking dish.
Give me an address to sent all the black plastic utensils I’ve replaced.
They can research what to do with them.
Well I’m glad I didn’t jump the gun on this. My mom sends me so many “X is bad” health articles that I like to sit on it for a month … or a year … and see how it shakes out.
I do agree with the “ceramic cookware” comments though. Decomposing teflon is certainly toxic. I learned to cook in the past few years and I LOVE searing meat at high temperature so the teflon has to go. Ceramic is really nice. Stainless steel with a good oil seasoning also works, though not quite as well. Chinese Cooking Demystified showed me how to long yau (long yeu? long yao?) in a stainless steel wok.
It gets worse: analysis has shown papers and studies that can’t be replicated get cited more than ones that can:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abd1705
It’s also very much worth reading Dr Ionnadis’s 2005 paper “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”:
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
Believe it or not, that’s an optimistic take on the subject: going from 99.9% wrong to 90% wrong is a massive improvement, and is consistent with the kind of progressive refinement that makes up the bulk of reputable science.
Add to that the explosion of ‘journals’ that are openly pay-to-play publication and citation farms, and you can make a decent first-order approximation that any ‘study’ you see mentioned in the press is about as valid as voodoo.
To answer the direct question of the article above: to avoid being fooled, look for the evidence and try to cross-reference the results in other ways.
Do black plastic spatulas contain brominated fire retardant chemicals? Maybe. Are those chemicals carcinogenic? Maybe. Is there any epidemiological evidence to show that people who use black plastic spatulas have higher rates of cancer than people who don’t? If not, what good is the study?
Do cell phones cause brain cancer? Is there any change in the rates of brain cancer since before cell phones? Do pesticides cause [health issue X]? What are the rates of [health issue X] among the farmers who work directly with the stuff in bulk?
Did changing the water treatment system in Flint Michigan release lead into the water? Yeah, a doctor noticed the trend in lead-related illnesses and reported her findings.. and the officials responsible for ensuring water safety immediately set about trying to destroy her credibility because they couldn’t make her evidence go away.
We haven’t waited long enough to find out.
The people of Flint who had good filtration out of caution avoided the issue altogether.
In the same way an abundance of caution may avoid being part of the afflicted group when the doctors start noticing.
These particular chemicals are likely risk factors for cancer with long term exposure. So in this case the risk cancer isn’t worth the reward of using crappy spatulas. For less than $5 they can be replaced with metal and the issue ignored.
If I am wrong it won’t be the only time I wasted $5.
Now their may be other uses for this material where the risk and reward works out differently. You have to evaluate each situation.
wooden utensils anyone? they have been in use for millenia.
You would have a very difficult time finding a more exhaustive and long-standing safety profile than wood. Just be careful cutting raw meat on it and I think you won’t go wrong
I dislike wood cooking utensils. The spoons are too thick and very shallow, the spatulas don’t bend, and I can’t soak them in the sink for too long or they’ll swell. Metal and plastic perform better.
Only 10% you say? Well in that case let’s eat keep eating those flame retardants, too much trouble to switch to metal or wood.
I believe this mistake was discovered by food YouTuber, he did a video on black plastic 3 weeks ago, discovered the error and said he contacted the authors.
Pretty neat.
https://youtu.be/58HUM40gDPU?si=Wt89aC5xkYengjnU&t=720
Oh, the guy’s name is Adam Ragusea, does cooking and food science related videos (mostly).
So according to AP this morning, this was a pretty old study, the mistake was quickly realized and the paper was withdrawn immediately. Yet some fear-mongers decided to jump on it.
Similar to the vaccines-cause-autism studies that were flawed and quickly withdrawn, yet still widely cited by the anti-vaxxers.
Color me crazy, but “There’s less toxic industrial waste in your black plastic food utensils than we originally thought” isn’t the flex people seem to think it is. The amount of unintended recycled consumer electronics flame retardants in my food preparation utensils should be zero or damn close to it, not 10% of the legally allowed amount.
Because – any amount other than zero raises questions. How many samples did they take, and how much did they vary? Is it possible other random suppliers might have higher levels? What are the long-term effects of ingestion, as opposed to an “acceptable” daily dosage. Do these chemicals bio-accumulate? Because I have kids that weigh considerably less than 60 kg, so honestly I don’t care so much about safe adult dosage when we shouldn’t be dealing with this at all.
I was born in the 60’s, when they routinely had asbestos in things like potholders, and that was legal at the time. “Below the legally acceptable amount” does not necessarily equal “Safe”.
I’ll stick with the stainless steel spatula, thanks.
“got their calculation of the intake limit wrong by a factor of ten.”
With that intake limit itself almost certainly being one based upon best guesses and not controlled studies in humans.
I’ve been using the same metal spatula for over 10 years. It can scrape the pan nicely and is sharp enough to break up meat and veggies in the pan while cooking. I haven’t found where I can buy another one as this one is quite rigid and the ones in stores are very flexible.
I bend it a few times and bend it back. It will eventually break due to metal fatigue. But it’s still working nicely. I hope it lasts many more years.
I don’t own any teflon pans as they wear. Cast iron and carbon steel are my favorite. Stainless steel is harder to clean in my opinion and also pretty expensive, but is great too. I left one of those on the stove by accident and it delaminated due to the heat.
My problem with these utensils is that they deform or even straight-up melt when applied to modest heating.
Only wimps use modest heating :). Searing is best with high heat. And food tastes better if you get some flame in the pan.
Hate that OXO garbage anyway. Whatever the narrative of the week may be on its toxicity, I will leave alone.
The blurb doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence either. Because science. I love a good metal spatula but tongs, man. Tongs are where its at for most of my hot food handling.
I call bs. Most studies of that type are about proving their already existing opinion, not valid research.