A Study That Said Black Plastic Utensils Had a Big Math Problem

The editors of the journal Environmental chemistry Chemosphere have written an interesting guide to toxicology research. Electronic fire extinguishers end up in some household items made of black plasticincluding kitchen utensils. The study introduced a the number of media reports a few weeks ago that he pleaded with the people urgently they remove their kitchen spatulas and spoons. Wirecutter also provided a shopping guide that instead of them.

Repairwritten on Sunday, it will remove the heat from the damaged vessels. The authors made a mathematical error that caused the risk of kitchen utensils to be off by an order of magnitude.

Specifically, the authors estimated that if a kitchen utensil contains a refrigerant (BDE-209), the utensil transfers 34,700 nanograms per day based on frequent use for cooking and serving hot food. The authors compared the comparison with the concentration of BDE-209 that is considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency. The safe level of EPA is 7,000 ng – per kilogram of body weight – per day, and the authors used 60 kg as the weight of an adult (about 132 pounds) in their calculations. Therefore, the EPA safe limit would be 7,000 multiplied by 60, yielding 420,000 ng per day. That is 12 times more than the exposure of 34,700 ng per day.

However, the authors missed the zero and reported the EPA’s safety level as 42,000 ng per day for a 60 kg adult. The error made it seem like the exposure was close to safe limits, even though it was less than one-tenth.

“(W) incorrectly calculated the dose for a 60 kg adult, initially thinking it was 42,000 ng/day instead of the correct value of 420,000 ng/day,” the correction reads. “As a result, we revised our wording from ‘daily readings may approach the US BDE-209 level’ to ‘daily readings remain significantly lower than the US BDE-209 level.’ We regret the error and have corrected it in our manuscript.”

Unchanged Endings

Although the systematic removal seems like a big mistake, the authors don’t seem to think that they will change anything. “This calculation error does not affect the finalization of the paper,” the correction reads. A revised study is able to conclude that fire retardants are “highly polluting” plastic products, which have a “high potential.”

Ars reached out to the lead author, Megan Liu, but she did not respond. Liu works for the environmental health advocacy group Toxic-Free Future, which led the study.

The research showed that fire retardants used in plastic electronics can, in some cases, be recycled into household products.