The editors of the environmental chemistry journal Chemosphere have posted an attention-grabbing correction to a study reporting that toxic flame retardants from electronics end up in household products made of black plastic, including kitchen utensils. The research has sparked a flurry of media reports over the past few weeks urging people to ditch their kitchen towels and spoons. The Wirecutter even offers a buying guide for what to replace.
The fix, posted on Sunday, will remove the heat from the broken vessels. The authors made a mathematical error that removed the estimated risk from kitchen utensils by an order of magnitude.
Specifically, the authors estimate that if a kitchen utensil contains moderate levels of a key toxic flame retardant (BDE-209), the utensil can transfer 34,700 nanograms of the contaminant per day based on normal use while cooking and serving hot food. The authors then compared that measurement to a reference level of BDE-209 that is 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 kilograms as an adult’s weight (about 132 pounds) for their estimate. Therefore, the EPA’s safe limit would be 7,000 multiplied by 60, yielding 420,000 ng per day. That’s 12 times the average exposure of 34,700 ng per day.
However, the authors missed the zero and reported the safe limit of EPA as 42,000 ng per day for a 60 kg adult. The error made it appear that the estimated exposure was close to the safe limit, when in fact it was less than one-tenth of the limit.
“[W]e miscalculates the reference dose for a 60 kg adult, initially estimating it at 42,000 ng/day instead of the correct value of 420,000 ng/day,” reads the correction. will reach the reference dose of the US BDE-209′ “calculated daily intake is still in the process of magnitude lower than the US reference standard BDE-209.’ We regret this error and have revised it in our manuscript.”
A fixed conclusion
Although going out of order of magnitude seems like a significant mistake, the authors don’t seem to think that it changes anything. “This calculation error does not affect the overall conclusion of the paper,” the correction reads. The revised study still concludes that flame retardants are “highly polluting” plastic products, with “high exposure potential.”
Ars has reached out to the lead author, Megan Liu, but has not heard back. Liu works for the environmental health advocacy group Toxic-Free Future, which led the study.
The study highlighted that flame retardants used in plastic electronics can, in some cases, be reused in household appliances.
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