Black plastic products may contain flame retardant and other toxic chemicals when they are made out of recycled ewaste. — TNS
A recent study that recommended black plastic products be immediately thrown away due to their toxic chemical content included a mathematics error that significantly overstated the risks of contamination.
However, its authors are standing by their conclusions and warn against using such products.
Published in the peer-reviewed science journal Chemosphere, experts from the US non-profit organisation Toxic-Free Future said they detected flame retardants and other toxic chemicals in 85% of 203 items made of black plastic.
These include kitchen utensils, take-out containers, children’s toys and hair accessories.
The study initially said the potential exposure to chemicals found in one of the kitchen utensils approached the minimum levels that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) deemed a health risk.
But in an update to the study, the authors say they made an error in their calculations and the real levels were “an order of magnitude lower” than the US EPA’s thresholds.
The error was discovered by McGill University’s Office for Science and Society director Dr Joe Schwarcz in Canada.
In a blog post, Dr Schwarcz explained that the Toxic-Free Future scientists miscalculated the lower end of what the US EPA considered a health risk through a multiplication error.
Instead of humans being potentially exposed to a dose of toxic chemicals in black plastic utensils near the minimum level that the agency deems a health risk, it’s actually about one-tenth of that.
Although Dr Schwarcz said the risks outlined in the study aren’t enough for him to discard his black plastic kitchen items if he had them, he agreed with the authors that flame retardants shouldn’t be in these products in the first place.
“The math error does not impact the study’s findings, conclusions or recommendations,” said study co-author and Toxic-Free Future science and policy manager Megan Liu.
She added that any traces of flame retardants or toxic chemicals in cooking utensils should be concerning for the public.
Flame retardants are getting into commonly-used items because black-coloured products are being made from recycled electronic waste (ewaste), such as discarded television sets and computers, that frequently contain the additives.
When they’re heated, the flame retardants and other toxic chemicals can migrate out.
If you’re wondering whether your old black plastic spoon or other utensils are a part of this group, Liu shared some more guidance:
It’s nearly impossible to know whether a black plastic product is contaminated.
That’s because these products that include recycled ewaste don’t disclose a detailed list of all ingredients and contaminants in the product.
Liu said it’s also unclear how many types of flame retardants are in these black plastic products.
Some of the products that researchers tested in this recent study “had up to nine different harmful chemicals and harmful flame retardants in them,” she said.
Anytime you’re looking for the type of recycled plastic a product is made of, you’re going to look for a number within the chasing arrows (that form a triangle) logo.
Recycling symbols are numbered one to seven and we commonly associate the numbers with what we can toss in our blue recycling bins.
The numbers stand for:
- 1: Polyethylene terephthalate
- 2: High-density polyethylene
- 3: Polyvinyl chloride (PVC)
- 4: Low-density polyethylene
- 5. Polypropylene
- 6: Polystyrene or Styrofoam, and
- 7: Miscellaneous plastics (including polycarbonate, polylactide, acrylic, acrylonitrile butadiene, styrene, fibreglass and nylon).
The study found higher levels of toxic flame retardants in polystyrene plastic, which is labelled with the number 6, said Liu.
There isn’t a definitively timeline of when recycled ewaste started to be incorporated into black plastic products specifically, but ewaste started to get recycled in the early 2000s, Liu said.
The way computers, handphones, stereos, printers and copiers were being disposed of previously was to simply add them to a landfill without reusing salvageable parts.
But as the US National Conference of State Legislatures noted, electronics production required a significant amount of resources that could be recovered through recycling.
Recovering resources such as metals, plastics and glass through recycling used a fraction of the energy needed to mine new materials.
However, the study pointed out that flame retardants and other chemical contaminates have been detected in and near ewaste recycling facilities, as well as in indoor air and dust at formal ewaste recycling facilities in Canada, China, Spain and the United States.
It also noted contamination in soil samples surrounding ewaste recycling sites in China and Vietnam.
The safest non-toxic material options for kitchen utensil are wood and stainless steel. – By Karen Garcia/Los Angeles Times/Tribune News Service
