☝️ Black plastics have been a buzzword in the media for a while now. Lots of different types of food contact articles, lots of opinions, lots of confusion. Let’s clear it up!

💡 A 2024 study published in Chemosphere looked at flame retardants in recycled black plastic kitchen utensils. Flame retardants are chemicals commonly used in (black) electronics to prevent or slow down fires. Many flame retardants have been linked to various health concerns, including carcinogenicity, endocrine disruption, neurotoxicity, and developmental toxicity. Plastics from these electronics might be recycled into usually black plastics, including household products such as kitchen utensils (think of a black spatula).

⚠️ The researchers found flame retardant concentrations ranging up to 22,800 mg/kg, including the restricted compound BDE-209, in recycled black household plastics such as food containers or kitchen utensils. They estimated a median consumer exposure of 7,900 ng/day from using these contaminated kitchen utensils. This is less than the US reference dose of 420,000 ng/day. However, other studies have found some flame retardants to have effects even at doses below the currently established safety thresholds (e.g., https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.2c02896). 

🤔 Even when concentrations are below the set reference doses, the question of whether flame retardants should be present in food contact materials at all still remains. According to the study’s authors, “The detection of flame retardants in collected household products indicates that recycling, without the necessary transparency and restrictions to ensure safety, is resulting in unexpected exposure to toxic flame retardants in household items.”