Why It's Time to Ditch Your Black Plastic Cookware

Soon after journalist Zoë Schlanger wrote the piece “Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula” in The Atlantic at the end of October, dozens of other news outlets ran their own versions of her story, all with the same recommendation: avoid using black plastic utensils in your kitchen.

Schlanger points to the years of research that show high levels of flame retardants in these objects. When exposed to high temperatures during cooking, these chemicals leak from the utensils into whatever food you’re preparing. And once ingested, flame retardants can mess with how your body regulates itself: many are considered endocrine disruptors, which means they mess with your hormones — the tools your body uses to regulate your organs.

But throwing out black kitchen utensils may not be enough. Schlanger’s reporting — and research coming out of Stanford’s School of Medicine — suggest that plastic, being an integral part of our lives, could have bigger health hazards than previously imagined. In November, KQED’s Forum spoke to Schlanger and Stanford’s Desiree LaBeaud, an infectious disease physician who leads the university’s plastic working group, to learn how we as individuals can respond to the risks brought upon by the plastic objects in our lives.

Keep reading for the takeaways from their conversation with KQED’s Lesley McClurg, including helpful strategies to reduce our dependence on plastic in our homes.

Skip ahead to:

• I’ve used plastic utensils my whole life. Why are they risky now?

• Are all plastic utensils — regardless of their color — bad for you?

• Beyond freaking out, how can I apply this information in my life?

• What are some alternatives to plastic kitchen utensils?

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Lesley McClurg: Why are there flame retardants in my black plastic scraper?

Zoë Schlanger: They were never meant to be there. That’s not where flame retardants are supposed to be. But unfortunately, black plastic is one of these compounds that tend to be entering the product stream from recycled material. And the thing that does have flame retardants in it are electronics.

I’m looking at a computer monitor right now with a black plastic casing that probably has flame retardants in it. My black plastic keyboard also has flame retardants. And due to demands for black plastic in kitchen objects, sometimes those materials get recycled into kitchen objects or toys.

In my mind, it makes sense that a computer, television or keyboard might have flame retardants, but why would the e-waste from those items be recycled and then made into spatulas or kids’ toys?

Schlanger: This is due to a wrinkle in the global recycling industry, where our recycling plants use optical sensors. These sensors see the plastic that’s coming through the recycling plants, but they can’t see the color black. Typically, in countries where recycling is quite regulated, black plastic never gets recycled. That means there’s this dearth — this lack of a supply — of black plastic from recycled material in the consumer stream.

When someone wants to make a black plastic spatula, they might have to look farther afield. And global plastic recycling is just that: a global phenomenon. There’s not a lot of oversight, particularly overseas. That’s how you end up with recycled e-waste entering the product stream in ways it really shouldn’t.

So, this is a supply and demand issue. We don’t have enough recycled black plastic to make these items?

Schlanger: For some reason, there’s been an aesthetic choice that says we want our spatulas, in particular, to be black. Another way this shows up a lot is in takeout containers. Those tend to be black for no discernible reason that I can tell. If it’s a black plastic, it is potentially full of flame retardants from the same e-waste stream.

When plastic comes in contact with heat, it starts to degrade. Or when it comes in contact with something fatty — let’s say, the cream in my coffee or the oil in your pan. Plastic components or components of plastic that are hazardous for our health are also lipophilic, meaning they are attracted to fat and they can transfer quite easily into fat. When you’re applying heat or oil fats to your plastic, it’s just encouraging those problematic compounds to enter your food or your mouth or the environment in different ways.

I don’t want to be putting flame retardants in my body. But what does the actual health research say are the health concerns or risks that could happen if I do consume this stuff?

Schlanger: The research on flame retardants is pretty clear. Many of them are considered endocrine disruptors, meaning they mess with your hormone system, which can have all these knock-on effects. Thyroid disease is a problem with flame retardants.

And it’s not just flame retardants. It’s also a group of chemicals broadly called plasticizers, like phthalates, which people may have heard about. These are added to plastic to make them flexible or soft. And they readily migrate out of the plastic because they’re not completely bound to the polymer molecule. With heat, use or wear, they can migrate out of that polymer chain and into your food.

We’re getting quite a few questions from listeners. One writes: ‘What about blue plastic? Yellow? Green? What about these other colors?’

Schlanger: All plastic is not something you want to be cooking with. I think that any expert would say that to you. Those other colors are not likely to come from an electronic waste stream just because of how many electronics are black. Maybe flame retardants would be less of an issue in those plastics. But there’s other things in plastics that you want to be wary about.

What do we know about silicone? Is it much better? Is it also dangerous?

Schlanger: What we know right now is that silicone is much better. It’s not plastic. It’s made of silica, an entirely different compound. And it does not form microparticles or nanoparticles in the way plastic does. There’s some concern for cheap silicone as it sometimes can contain chemical fillers. This is not something where there’s a lot of oversight. But if it’s mostly just a silicone object, you’re good.

For folks who might not be familiar, what are microplastics and why are they bad?

Desiree LaBeaud: All the plastic that we have in our lives slowly breaks down into smaller and smaller bits. And those teeny bits are called microplastics. And we ingest these plastics supposedly at the rate of a credit card of plastic a week. And we also inhale them because a lot of plastic is actually burned in the world to deal with the waste crisis or through wildfires and so forth, or even just the house dust in our homes.

When that plastic gets into our bodies, it impacts our bodies in all sorts of ways. And there’s been a lot of research to show that microplastics and even the smaller, finer plastics, which are called nanoplastics, can lead to a lot of different health effects through impairing the way that our cells function: the biochemistry, the energy, the way that our organs develop. Even carcinogenesis, which is the development of cancer. All of that can come from these microplastics.

A listener calls in to ask: “What about Legos?”

LaBeaud: Legos are made of very, very, very hard, durable plastic. Some types of plastic are going to break down more than others. And Legos are at ambient temperature. They’re not being heated up. I don’t think you need to go and throw away all your Legos at this time. It’s just like we keep saying: It’s about the dose. You choose your Legos, but you don’t heat up your plastic and cook it in hot oil, right?

How freaked out should I be? How should I respond to this information?

Schlanger: For me, it goes back to this idea of lowering your dose. There’s only a few [environments] in our lives that we can control. And one of those is our kitchens. It actually brings me some measure of comfort to say, ‘All right, I can just have a stainless steel spatula. I can choose to use fewer plastic takeout containers. And all of these things are tiny little things I’m doing for my overall health.’ It doesn’t have to be overwhelming.

Does the body rid itself or detox from plastics? If you take yourself off plastics, does the body do a good job of getting these things out of your body?

LaBeaud: As humans, we have three different things we can do [to get rid of toxins in our bodies]: we pee, poo and sweat. And this is the way that we release all sorts of different toxins that we come in contact with through our food or environment. That’s the natural process … but we don’t rid ourselves of all of the plastic. Some of it ends up somehow in our body tissues, which is what more and more research is finding, and that is harder for us to get rid of.

Where would you suggest people start if they want to start having less plastic in their lives?

LaBeaud: Your kitchen is the first place to start … if you’re heating up your plastic, you don’t want to be. You’d rather be using something else like glass or ceramic. Your pots, pans and utensils are a good start. Try and replace the nonstick coating with something else that isn’t going to leach chemicals into your food. Replace those utensils. When we’re heating up our food in the microwave with Tupperware, that now should be replaced with glass. Instead of single-use plastic water bottles, we can filter our water and then just put it in a glass bottle or a metal bottle.

When we start to consume and choose products that are not in plastic, the industry will respond, and we’ll start to put more things back into recyclable containers, things that are actually truly recyclable.