2024-12-18 11:00:00
Editors of the environmental chemistry journal Chemosphere have posted a striking correction to a study reporting it is toxic Flame retardants from electronics end up in some black plastic household productsincluding kitchen utensils. The study led to a flow of media reports a few weeks ago that people were urgently begging for it throw away their kitchen spatulas and spoons. Wirecutter even offered a buying guide for what to replace them with.
The correctionposted Sunday will likely take some heat off the beleaguered kitchenware. The authors made a calculation error that reduced the estimated risk of kitchenware by an order of magnitude.
Specifically, the authors estimate that if a kitchen utensil contained moderate amounts of a major toxic flame retardant (BDE-209), the utensil would transfer 34,700 nanograms of the contaminant per day, based on regular use while cooking and serving hot food. The authors then compared that estimate to a reference level of BDE-209 that was considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA’s safe level is 7,000 ng per kilogram of body weight per day, and the authors used 60 kg as an adult weight (about 132 pounds) for their estimate. So the safe EPA limit would be 7,000 multiplied by 60, which gives 420,000 ng per day. That is twelve times more than the estimated exposure of 34,700 ng per day.
However, the authors missed a zero and reported the EPA’s safe limit at 42,000 ng per day for a 60 kg adult. The error made it appear as if the estimated exposure was close to the safe limit, even though it was actually less than one-tenth of the limit.
“We incorrectly calculated the reference dose for a 60 kg adult and initially estimated it at 42,000 ng/day instead of the correct value of 420,000 ng/day,” the correction reads. “As a result, we have revised our statement from ‘the calculated daily intake would approximate the US BDE-209 reference dose’ to ‘the calculated daily intake remains an order of magnitude lower than the US BDE-209 reference dose.’ We regret this error and have updated it in our manuscript.”
Unchanged conclusion
While it seems like a big mistake to be wrong by a big margin, the authors don’t seem to think it changes anything. “This calculation error does not affect the overall conclusion of the article,” the correction reads. The corrected study still ends with the claim that the flame retardants “significantly contaminate” the plastic products, which have a “high exposure potential.”
Ars reached out to the lead author, Megan Liu, but did not receive a response. Liu works for the environmental health organization Toxic-Free Future, which led the study.
The research shows that flame retardants used in plastic electronics can in some cases be recycled into household items.
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