innumeracy is a big problem among journalists (I guess more of them would have headed for finance if they were better at math) - I used to see significant errors and misunderstandings among financial journalists in our major papers when i was working for a financial business. I dont think the difference here would have changed my decision to dump my melting chinese black spatulas in any event. Too many problems with manufacturing quality in many sectors now with recycled plastics being only one.
Now, I don’t feel so bad when I get the amount of my tip off by a few percentage points.
At least, unlike these highly trained Ph.Ds, I don’t get my tip amount “off by a factor of ten”
Someone needs to get fired. STAT.
most of these writers (if its not AI generated) are probably getting paid a pittance…the writers in the WSJ and the NYT a few years back were not, though and real fact checking involving research is becoming a luxury.
I am referring to the research scientists, not the authors of the article reporting on the scientists inability to carry fractions.
There were errors but there’s also this from the article:
“However, it is important to note that this does not impact our results,” Liu told National Post. “The levels of flame retardants that we found in black plastic household items are still of high concern, and our recommendations remain the same.”
. . .
As Schwarcz points out, it appears the study’s hypothesis is correct, that black plastic recycled out of electronic devices, mostly in Asia, is getting back into the American supply chain for household kitchen items, including spatulas.
they “missed” by a factor of ten.
that is not insignificant and: “does not impact our results” is a ten factor lie.
So, the chemical is safe for humans to ingest if you correct the math error? How 'bout lead? Cadmium? Plutonium?
The problem for consumers is, absent doing your own testing of a Dollar Store spatula, you can’t tell. Specifically, you can’t tell if the plastic is recycled, from anyplace that hasn’t banned both the compound and eliminated it from the stream. It’s all suspect, much like the original Le Creuset colors that contained beaucoups cadmium.
The information gap between the origin and the consumer is insurmountable. Then add intentional obfuscation.
I think I remember reading somewhere that smoking was safe, sugar was good for you, and fat was bad. Lots of research to support those things, paid for by the folks who benefit from them.
So whose “lies” are the ones we need to worry about, that’s the real question. The people who know the truth from the outset and do their best to obfuscate it, or those who stumble into it much later (after plenty and widespread damage done) and trying to uncover what’s been deliberately hidden.
Gotta love the conspiracy theory nutjobbing about something that’s bad no matter which way you look at it, “in defense of” I’m not sure what, but staunchly against any scientific efforts in service of something better.
Yeah, the flyspecking of the least error or limitation in research escapes me, especially when there is no serious doubt that the subject, Compound X, is toxic. Similarly, when there’s not a peer-reviewed metastudy of what’s in a Dollar Store item.
I’m not gullible (enough) to believe every alarmist, push/cause piece, but man, we’re too cynical and skeptical about anything that finds health and environmental risks.
The question isn’t necessarily whether microplastics are toxic, and lets assume they are, it’s whether they are actually toxic at certain levels of exposure.
Everything, even something as benign as water, is toxic if one consumes enough of it within a certain period of time. Too much antibiotics are toxic, and that’s actually considered “medicine.”
If the exposure from black plastic from houseware and utensils are too minute to be significant, then there is a sense of “the chicken little, sky is falling” mentality.
Like I said up above, I would still like to see some study that says there is a definitive causation between black plastics and toxicity in human beings.
Until I see something like that, or at least close to it (where the basic math is actually correct), I am not really going to worry about black plastics, white plastics, or red plastics or any type of plastics.
It’s not microplastics this is about. It’s bromelated fire retardants.
Still trying understand why known toxic chemicals, banned in USA for years, found in recycled materials still being put into food utensils, needs further study to justify choosing a different spatula.
remember the A-test and H-tests from the 50’s- 60’s . . . and the strontium 90 song from the 70’s . . . .
well, it still hasn’t gone away. the big deal was milk, but since has spread into just about every foodstuff consumed by humans.
Yes, children were told not to eat snow/make snow cream as the snow to avoid radioactivity.
Yes, and I learned about strontium-90 in breast milk way before having my kids and then finding out it was in the calcium supplements we took for prenatal vitamins.
But, I have great hips!
I know there are other microplastics (MP) threads, but I decided to post this here, which seems to have the most current activity. I thought this was a compelling and well-written review of the possible link between early onset colorectal cancer (EOCRC) and MP. It’s from a New Zealand group and I found through a link on the City of Hope website. It’s a brief report and written simply so that people without a science/biology/medical background can read it. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10340669/
Of course, obesity/inactivity are still thought to be the leading cause of EOCRC, evidenced by the obesity epidemic in the general population which is occurring to an alarming extent in younger adults and kids. But a number of risk factors, including the ingestion (even inhalation) of MP, cannot be ruled out.
Interesting report.
But again, that New Zealand study is an observational correlative one, and provides no definitive conclusion as to whether these microplastics (or any related chemicals found in plastics) actually cause some sort of disease in humans, be it cancer or anything else.
Look, I am not disputing that microplastics are harmful to humans, especially if ingested in sufficient quantities within a set time period. But the key here is both dosage and time.
I mean, take for example, if I used one black plastic fork to eat my chicken bowl once every year, I don’t think there would be any cause for concern health-wise. But if I did the same thing 10x a day, every single day of the year, the thought may be very different.
Heck, look at alcohol. Alcohol is a a toxin, poisonous to human beings at any amount. There is no amount of alcohol that is considered healthy for consumption; it’s a poison (yes, red wine is supposed to be heart healthy, but it isn’t the wine per se, but the antioxidants (i.e., resveratrol) found in red wine, which can also be found in other things, like grape leaves, blueberries, dark chocolate, etc.). But despite that, we still consume alcohol, and for the most part we can do it safely if the dosage (within a certain temporal limit) is not exceeded. But even at a “safe” dosage, it’s still a poison.
TL;DR microplastics are no doubt harmful, but before we decide to throw out all black plastics we have to have some clarity as to the dosage (or exposure) that makes black plastics actually and meaningfully harmful to humans otherwise we fall into the proverbial trap of “dropping boulders to pick up pebbles”
according to the hype pubs - we all consume/eat/ingest . . .
one credit card volume/mass of “micro plastics” every month.
or . . . 12 disposable shopping bags . . . .
please examine your black plastic spatula before and after use.
is it missing 1/30th of its volume/mass?
I have a big-xss black spatula to flip pancakes.
it takes ~2 seconds of contact to flip six (blueberry) pancakes on the griddle.
and another ~2 seconds of contact to move them to the plate.
and , , , in that time the OMG! molecules have migrated from a ‘room temp’ plastic thingie into those six pancakes.
can anyone explain this level of ‘ludicrousness’ - I can’t. but that’s just me.
You won’t get that for pretty much any chemical - even chemicals which have their requisite warnings in the lab or “real” world are based with very few exceptions in limited animal (mostly rodent tox and pharmacology data). Any clinical compound which is tested in patients (and potential can ho to market) is based on similar (limited) data as getting “evidence” on human data and correlation has ethical, time and financial limitations. At the same time, correlation between animal data and human data (might it be tox, pharmacology or PK) is actually quite limited (there is a reason why so many compounds/modalities fail in clinical trials - so overall you will most likely never get “hard” scientific evidence on the correlation between MP and potential direct negative human tox readouts and so we will have to rely on the (limited) existing animal data do that everybody can make their personal safety assessment (and subsequent consequences/actions)
Tobacco and alcohol.
