New research published in Chemosphere reveals an alarming reality: everyday kitchen utensils may quietly harm your well-being. The research reveals the extent to which some cooking tools, particularly black plastic ones, contaminate food with deadly toxins while we cook:
Black plastic kitchenware is a serious problem. Most contain harmful chemicals like flame retardants, colorants, and other additives that can migrate into food during cooking. The study cites black non-stick cookware, plastic cutting boards, and plastic utensils as particular causes of chemical contamination.
Even though plastic kitchenware is convenient, cheap, and easy to clean, these benefits are paid for with a potential cost to your health. The longevity and ease of cleaning that sell the products to consumers cannot be worth the potential health risks they provide.
Scientists are most concerned with long-term exposure through regular food preparation.
Black spatulas, plastic forks and knives, and certain pans release toxic chemicals such as decabromodiphenyl ether (decaBDE), a flame retardant found in household goods. The chemical has been linked to thyroid and hormone disruption, cancer risks, and developmental issues in children. What makes these pollutants sneaky is that they are invisible – there is no way for consumers to know they are there.
Even more alarming, many of those toxic chemicals are recycled from electronics. Manufacturers put flame retardants in kitchenware in the guise of making kitchens safer against fire, but in doing so, they cause significant health risks that can outweigh any safety advantage.
[...] To minimize exposure to these poisons, substitute offending cookware with safer options that can be simply incorporated into your daily cooking routine:
- Replace plastic cutlery with old-school metal silverware, which will not leach chemicals into food and offers improved durability
- Substitute non-stick pans with stainless steel or cast iron cookware. Though stainless steel may take a bit longer to preheat, it offers a safer cooking surface free of potentially toxic substances
- Substitute plastic cutting boards with tempered glass cutting boards, offering a non-porous, chemical-free surface that is resistant to bacterial contamination and doesn't release microplastics when foods are being prepared.
- As an alternative to glass, opt for solid wood cutting boards without glue-based adhesives if glass seems impractical. Choose boards constructed from a single piece of wood rather than composite materials that can contain chemical adhesives. Keep in mind that these natural alternatives must be hand-washed rather than dishwasher-cleaned
DOI: Megan Liu, Sicco H. Brandsma, Erika Schreder - From e-waste to living space: Flame retardants contaminating household items add to concern about plastic recycling. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2024.143319
(Score: 4, Funny) by Username on Friday March 07, @03:39PM (12 children)
Just remember acidic foods, like tomato sauce, will leech chromium out of stainless steel.
(Score: 5, Touché) by RamiK on Friday March 07, @05:30PM (10 children)
You're getting:
Chromium and nickel from stainless steel when cooking acidic food especially but also a bit in general.
Various carcinogenics from seasoned iron.
Forever carcinogenics from Teflon & co.
Chromium and more from the various titanium alloys.
Random stuff (usually the bad kind) from ceramics.
Lead and cadmium when using glass-glazed ceramics and almost all glass cookware.
Nothing from Borosilicate glass.
Nothing from pure titanium.
---
So, your best bet is to fry using a titanium pan and cook using Borosilicate glassware.
p.s. Personally I just use stainless steel.
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(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Friday March 07, @05:48PM (6 children)
Generally irrelevant because it'll be at levels lower than the incoming food; If you friday fish fry some fish in a cast iron pot today, there indeed technically will be "some" mercury in the pot but less than there was in the fish and so on and so forth. If you were willing to eat the mystery discount bacon, the pan seasoning left behind after frying the bacon should be less harmful in proportion to mass and volume.
I see people occasionally advise to use really weird seed oils and curious industrial products to season cast iron; stuff I wouldn't intentionally voluntarily consume. Probably a very bad idea. Just fry a couple bacon slices and/or some burger patties and the seasoning will take care of itself eventually. CI is for patient people. Like, if you would never in a million years pour a shotglass of the oil or "whatever" seasoning product and chug it, why would you season your pan with it and then cook in that pan? May as well use housepaint. In a similar manner, Lodge used to sell "pre-seasoned" cast iron pans that were "pre-seasoned" with I donno, and I don't want to eat "I donno". It kind of resembled that sealant I spread on my asphalt driveway every couple years. If I have to re-season I'll do maybe one coat of olive oil or avocado oil for rust prevention and use it for meat, just do not fry eggs in there until the pan is non-stick again, won't take long.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday March 07, @08:40PM (2 children)
The fumes when polymerizing the oil layer by bringing it to the smoking point (i.e. seasoning) is highly carcinogenic. On top of that, when you, say, char or sear a steak, the carcinogenics that would normally stick to the pan now end up in your plate in higher dosages as well as the next plate since you're not going to ruin your seasoning by scrubbing it off every time you cook something.
Still, I admit I just don't have any real numbers to compare the toxicology between stainless steel, aluminum (which I haven't mention earlier despite being the most popular option), seasoned cast-iron or Teflon. I can only say for sure that that titanium and Borosilicate simply don't leech so they're no-risks while postulating all the non-stick options are, in the end, more carcinogenics on the plate. I could be wrong about the latter... But if I REALLY cared, I would just fork up the dough and get a titanium pan and some lab gear or something and be done with it seeing how I'm not averse to scrubbing anyhow.
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(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday March 07, @08:59PM (1 child)
I suspect the definition of "the oil" varies a lot by the specific oil, and the relative rank of "highly carcinogenic" seems a bit suspect. Its charred food, not exactly aflatoxins or hexane (commonly found in veg oils)
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday March 07, @09:20PM
I'm too lazy to revisit the literature but some quick googling gives you the numbers: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4881732/ [nih.gov]
Btw, on the general theme echoed by the other commenter and you veg oil comment, a meta you'll enjoy: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9497933/ [nih.gov]
Be sure to follow on the other poster's youtube link while reading it though to fully appreciate it. I did :D
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(Score: 2) by datapharmer on Saturday March 08, @09:33AM (1 child)
Bacon a similar are the way to go. Counter intuitively you want low smoke point for seasoning as the carbon is needed to create the hard seasoned layer, so real high smoke point oils like olive oil will give you “this meal” non-sticky qualities, but won’t give the pan longer term protection as easily unless you get it really really hot.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday March 08, @08:32PM
I do have a pretty good seasoning on the pan after cooking bacon and sausage.
I have often thought that if it "builds up" then you're not cooking on the bottom layer of polymerized whatever you seasoned/cooked first, you're cooking on polymerized whatever you cooked most recently.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09, @01:53AM
From the species perspective in the long term, it doesn't matter as long as most humans are living long enough to produce the next generations. We might eventually evolve to deal with it, or not.
BTW y'know those tons of research that some people love to use to show that Roundup (the pesticide) is safe? Most/all of them only test glyphosate, not the other ingredients in Roundup. And some of the other ingredients have been proven to be very toxic. So imagine how many of the "safety testing" is like that? Here's our product with dozens of stuff, but don't worry the single active ingredient is safe, don't look at the other stuff too closely.
p.s. maybe the rise in peanut allergies and similar are related to one or more of these things.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07, @06:12PM (1 child)
As the noted oncologist explains... [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday March 07, @09:05PM
On point.
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(Score: 2) by Kell on Friday March 07, @11:53PM
Sung to the tune of Yakko's World:
Chromium nickel from your stainless skittle when cooking up acidic foods,
There's Carcinogenics from seasoned iron billets, forever chems from teflon too,
There's random bad stuff from glass that is tough, with lead glass and cadmium tools,
Beware chromium, cadmium, and also titanium alloys all coated with goo,
There's hard boroscilicate glassware and casseroles, carafes and pitchers and pots,
There's hundreds of deadly cancerous chemicals scattered all over your lawn!
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Friday March 07, @06:07PM
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4284091/ [nih.gov]
"The tenth cooking cycle, resulted in an average of 88 μg of Ni and 86 μg of Cr leached per 126 g serving of tomato sauce."
https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/chromium-supplement-oral-route-parenteral-route/description/drg-20070098 [mayoclinic.org]
Note that "RNI" and "RDA" are not optimum intakes, they're minimums required to consume without getting short term illness symptoms, and the mayo clinic seems to think averaging around 100 ug/day is about right for adults, maybe somewhat less for little kids. Probably I should be eating more because I'm big and exercise (and sweat) a lot more than average and I'd rather be long term health than merely barely not short term sick. I don't eat pasta sauce daily, of course. In summary, for most people, most of the time, they probably NEED the chromium in stainless steel.
The problem with chromium is people with an allergy, which is apparently common, around 6% of people have some symptom or another. They are the ones who need to avoid stainless steel.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2810703/ [nih.gov]
It's kind of like nickel plated machine parts and firearms; cool looking until you run into someone with a nickel allergy, then those products kind of suck. Same situation with chromium.
(Score: 5, Informative) by tekk on Friday March 07, @03:47PM (11 children)
Heads up since this is old and didn't include the updates: they did the math wrong and their numbers are off by an order of magnitude. I believe this was retracted for that reason, but I don't remember for sure.
(Score: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 07, @04:05PM (7 children)
I also saw the retractions several times, after seeing the "scare headlines" several more times...
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday March 07, @05:21PM (6 children)
What is the best known factual info on this? I tend to believe that even if this research made a mathematical error, making cooking utensils out of plastic nevertheless was a bad idea. I've seen the plastic spatula with the worn down and partly melted end and wondered, where did that material go? Into the food? Most likely yes.
Plastic is everywhere. Difficult to avoid it all. For now, I have compromised by keeping plastic away from hot food. I'll reluctantly use it for cold food, but won't heat food in plastic.
Stop microwaving plastic [wired.com]
I transfer microwave meals from the plastic containers intended for heating the food over to ceramic glass stuff, such as my mother's Corelle dinnerware that was purchased in 1978 and that I inherited and recently learned may have lead in it, sigh. Small print on the center of the backs makes no mention of it being microwavable, that verbiage began to appear in the 1980s.
I tested it for lead, using a swab designed for that, and the results were negative. No lead on the surface. If it had been bought in the early 1970s or earlier, much higher chance of there being lead paint in it. There could still be lead in the paints and dyes locked away under the glaze. As long as that glaze holds, should be okay to use even if there is lead inside. I really must remember to keep a few shards for testing the next time one is broken in an accident.
I have one inherited item that I am sure is leaded, these fancy, luxury glasses that were only used for special occasions. When I was a kid, I found that I hated drinking from them. Beverages didn't taste as good. These drinking glasses have a single ornate letter painted on. The tradition was that families chose a set with the first letter of their last name. I tested one, and the painted letter just screamed out "lead"! The glass itself did not, but my guess is that it is leaded glass. Has that characteristic coloring of leaded glass: light gray with just a hint of tan. So either the swab test failed to detect lead in the glass, or I wasn't persistent enough and didn't do the test correctly (but it did work on the painted letter), or the glass isn't leaded after all, hmm. One way to tell whether a car (pre-catalytic converter) was using leaded or unleaded gas was to look at the color of the inside of the tailpipe. Unleaded gasoline makes a black coating, leaded gasoline makes a tan coating.
One thing we also had for a short time were a few teflon cooking trays and pans. Eventually the teflon started flaking.
So what is safe? Stainless steel, or do we need to worry about chromium toxicity? That one is tricky. Hexavalent chromium is toxic, trivalent chromium is a necessary nutrient. What about aluminum cookware? Copper? There's a report that unanodized aluminum cookware could increase the occurrence of Alzheimer's. There's also copper toxicity. Copper is coated with tin or nickel, but those coatings are not that durable. Want to be careful with cooking acidic foods such as tomatoes. Ceramic is okay, provided it wasn't manufactured decades ago when it was sadly common to use lead in the glaze. What does that leave? Cast iron? Titanium? Relatively recent ceramic? Gold?? The more a person reads about cookware, the wider one realizes the choices and experiments are.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 07, @06:03PM
As I understand the issue, there was a hypothesis that recycled (not 'virgin') plastic has higher levels of "bad things" - which it does - so then they set out to find out if the levels of "bad things" in kitchenware made from recycled plastic rises to levels that should be considered unacceptable risk of harm. From there, I believe black plastic from recycled material was identified as having the highest levels, and then they did the analysis and misplaced a decimal point or two, resulting in "concerning levels of bad stuff" from the analysis.
As I read the retraction, the mistake was significant enough that the results fell below accepted levels of concern when the math was fixed up.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by corey on Friday March 07, @11:44PM (1 child)
If you take it to the extreme, you’ll end up eating only freshly picked seeds, nuts, tubers, fruits and veg; and cook occasional meat on a fire. Just like hunter gatherers did for millions of years prior to the agricultural age. Human biology is adapted to that lifestyle. And they were healthier and happier than we are.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 10, @12:16AM
Healthier and happier is debatable.
I come down on the side that modern people would be happier and healthier with that diet, minus the occasional overload of parasites and other nasties that ancient people faced more often.
I just read an analysis that the average modern adult has about one "spoon" (or fork, if you like) equivalent of micro plastic distributed throughout their brain, and when that amount reaches three to four spoons worth it is usually associated with dementia.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by EvilSS on Saturday March 08, @01:21AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday March 08, @01:39PM (1 child)
Yes, and I looked around for XRF testing services or equipment. Difficult. Needs to be done in an atmosphere that doesn't interfere with the technique. Doesn't have to be a vacuum but that is best. As to the price, there wasn't much on that either. Maybe $20 per test, and if this is for just one dinnerware item, that's too expensive, cheaper to just throw it away and buy a new item. Businesses that can do such work are geared more towards testing for lead paint in buildings, for remodeling businesses. They don't seem interested in offering their services to individuals.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Friday March 14, @05:27AM
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07, @04:28PM (2 children)
From Corrigendum to ‘From e-waste to living space: Flame retardants contaminating household items add to concern about plastic recycling’ [Chemosphere 365 (2024) 143319] [sciencedirect.com] (December, 2024):
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Friday March 07, @07:36PM (1 child)
There is some high-grade BS in that statement.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Friday March 07, @09:02PM
I'm sure it was a minor miscalculation in the BS reference dose, happens all the time.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07, @03:56PM (2 children)
Cherry spatulas and spoons last a long time. Cherry is also used in glass blowing/forming because when the wood chars, it retains its strength. Bamboo is also good for cooking utensils, but I don't think it works so well if used for high temperature frying(?)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Adam on Friday March 07, @05:50PM (1 child)
The issue with bamboo is that it's a composite of multiple pieces, so you're limited to the breakdown temperature of the glue used in the laminations. It's also fairly abrasive as far as cutting boards go, but that's not so much an issue for spoons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07, @07:34PM
the cheap set of bamboo slotted_spatula & slotted_spoon we have sure look like they are each made from one piece of bamboo -- the dark bands where the grass is segmented are all lined up as they were in the plant, and there are no visible glue lines that I can see.
maybe these were cut/routed/carved from giant bamboo that grows to 30 m / 100 ft tall? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrocalamus_giganteus#Uses [wikipedia.org]
> Dendrocalamus giganteus is used in construction and weaving. The shoots are edible.
For cutting boards, yes, there is glue or other adhesive involved.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Friday March 07, @05:53PM (2 children)
Pretty sure they've never "cooked" anything beyond maybe sliced cheese for crackers. That's pretty hard on the knife edge. You're not going to be slicing tomatoes for long on a glass board.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Undefined on Friday March 07, @06:11PM
🔪🍅 This [amazon.com] is much more fun anyway.
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Friday March 07, @11:15PM
A traditional wood used for chopping boards and butcher's blocks is birch, and the pre-industrial glue used for fabricating the board or block from multiple pieces would have been animal glue, either hide glue or bone glue. You don't want to inhale birch dust from sanding (advice that applies to pretty much all woods, but some are worse than others - you really want to avoid working laburnum, oleander, and yew wood of the commonly available woods) [wood-database.com])
- Bill Pentz: Cyclone and Dust Collection Research [billpentz.com]
As for the glue, if used, you'll want it to be 'food-grade', and not just 'food-safe'. You can get 'food-grade' epoxies, and food-grade animal glues; but not all epoxies and animal glues are food-grade: it is up to the manufacturer to make sure they are, and it is a procedure that adds cost to the production. You can build a butcher's block without glue, cutting the individual pieces to fit together and holding them in a frame, which itself can be glued, but ensuring that the cutting surface is glue-free.
Round it off with carbon-steel knives and cast iron pots and pans.
I (currently) use a mixture of cast-iron, stainless-steel and aluminium pots and pans, stainless steel knives, and a combination of plastic and wood chopping/cutting boards - so I'm not obsessive over things. It's very convenient to put the plastic chopping/cutting boards into the dishwasher.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by istartedi on Friday March 07, @06:41PM (1 child)
And the reason we use those? Fancy modern non-stick pans. I think it all started with PTFE, aka Teflon. It was quite some time before people realized how toxic it was. The first problem I recall involved birds. Yes, birds. There are people who let their pet birds fly loose in the house. Not the kind of people I want to be around, but God bless 'em for cuing us in to this. Birds are particularly susceptible to PTFE, and might scrape some off, ingest it, and die. We literally got a canary warning on this!
So you're not going to die right off like a bird, but PTFE ain't good for humans, or at the very least we don't need it. I think they phased it out, but the plastic utensils you have to use to avoid scratching it are still around, and there are new non-stick coatings and...
I'm happy with my cast iron skillet, cooking oil, and the occasional scrape if I don't get it right. Love to put butter in the pan and scramble eggs. There's very little sticking. My ancestors did stuff like that, and lived to ripe old ages.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Friday March 07, @08:11PM
I guess the idea was good, in theory. It was just that in practice it was horrible. Since you cook food in it. There will be scratches and eventually you'll be eating teflon flakes. Even if you try and take care and only use like soft rounded wooden utensils with the teflon pan it will eventually scratch anyway. Either from the utensils or from the food you prepare in it.
Not sure when plastic became a cookware thing. Beyond boxes to store leftovers in. Plastic utensils have longevity? Are people saving the one-usage take-away stuff? Or do people actually buy and use that for normal usage? They are so flimsy. The knives go dull basically instantly as the little teeth are smoothed down or break from usage. The fork prongs don't have the strength of metal and keep breaking. I had some take-away kebab box with fries several months ago. The plastic fork didn't even survive the encounter trying to pick up the fries before they started to break. I had to resort to using my pocket knife.
As noted. Use more fat when you fry things. The food won't stick. If it sticks you didn't add enough oil or butter. Add more. You don't have to eat it or drink it after wards. So it's not really dangerous.
Also from a technical standpoint I don't think the utensils are trying to poison me. They are after all not sentient. The manufacturers of said utensils tho might be another matter. They are either trying to poison me knowingly or unknowingly. Either or. Which I guess is why most of mine are made of steel, iron or wood. Also mine can all be recycled when I am done with them. I guess the plastic goop can be reused to after enough chemical baths and it becomes slurry.
The upside of wood is that once I'm done with it and it's starting to show it's age I can just burn it for heat.
The upside with metal -- you can clean it by just pouring boiling, or really hot, water on it. Scraping as needed. Done. Are there scratches in my cast iron kitchenware? Sure. Does it matter? No. Are there little rust flakes on some of them. Sure. But it's not really dangerous. It might be unseemly. But it's not really dangerous, as far as I know. It's not like I lick the rust.
(Score: 5, Funny) by EJ on Friday March 07, @11:58PM
I don't have to worry about any of this because all I eat is McDonald's.