That's true of nearly everything in this space. You'll find lots and lots of comments below about PFAS and Teflon pans, for example, ranging from factual-but-misleading (e.g. "Teflon pans can emit harmful gases when overheated") to bald assertions (multiple variations on "Teflon pans are harmful to your health") with no context or specificity to the claim.

Setting aside the fact that the purported harms (if specified at all!) are nearly always based on confounded observational studies and/or animal models at doses that may not bear any relationship to the doses you're being exposed to in real life, the claims for any particular item are usually presented out of context. For example, is exposure at X<10 parts per billion compound Y meaningful, as a human who lives in the real world? Typically, nobody knows, but you can nearly always find an "expert" who will confidently claim that any exposure is "dangerous."

Skepticism and awareness of risk magnitude is essential when reading stuff like this. Academics who specialize in obscure areas love to get their name in the press, and the easiest way to do that is to go to a reporter and make vague and irresponsible claims about risks to human health, even if those risks are very, very small. [1]

For what it's worth, I have a Teflon pan, I've used black plastic spatulas in the past, and I'm not worried about it. Compared to the reasons I already know that I'm likely to die, these things are irrelevant.

[1] Case in point: I knew a tenured professor at a prestigious university who was absolutely convinced that if we all continued to eat beef, we'd be looking at an epidemic of vCJK (aka Mad Cow Disease). Saw a lecture from this person on the subject over a decade ago now, where the risks were presented as looming and absolute. We're still eating beef. Guess what hasn't happened since then?

It’s kind of funny to watch the following conversations both recur regularly here on HN:

- The replication crisis means most science is bad and we should be extremely skeptical of scientific consensus.

- This one single scientific paper changes everything and you are negligent if you don’t immediately change your life based on it.

But why take the chance? Just buy a metal spatula next time and there’s nothing to worry about if it turns out to be true

It's important to understand that coloring plastics change their characteristics, though (I'll add the link if I can find it again).

Also, plastics have quality grades from "that's good stuff" to "this thing smells funny in a bad way". We have some IKEA food tweezers which use black plastic molded on steel prongs. It's stamped with "+150 degrees C" and the black is hazy, like it's colored with a dye or pigment, and plastic is hard like bakelite.

OTOH, I have used other "black" spatulas which are uniform in color, but neither as sturdy, nor smell neutral.

We have silicone counterparts to these items too. They're more rubbery, but they have hard plastic spines inside so, they don't flex.

Why do you trust gidmkhealthnerd, a psuedonym who likely knows nothing about it and offers nothing but a personal opinion, over the post of someone who studied it and gathered actual experimental evidence?

it's a weird hill to die on when you can get an almost-exact item made from silicone instead of that gross plastic

Stupidity has always bothered me. Strident pseudo-intellectual stupidity bothers me almost more than cruel ignorant stupidity.

At least now I'm angry in a constructive way.

"I don't find the data personally convincing" is a poor retort. And that's all he says, without any further information.

Is his post supposed to be taken seriously?

If this person is a fact checker, he's probably run into plenty of people who would say "I don't find the data personally convincing" to explain why they don't trust vaccines.

The precautionary principle plus what we know about heating plastic makes your reticence seem churlish.

There are easy, safe alternatives in wood, metal and silicone. There’s no need to risk it.

I appreciate your skepticism. This article has that feeling of almost being designed to create a panic. First, there's the headline, which is written in the same tone as someone warning you that you're about to step on a snake—a tone which does not invite critical thinking. Then there's the fact that since most people aren't subscribers to The Atlantic, they'll just see the first couple paragraphs and make their decisions based on that. I currently do not know how much weight I should put on what this article says, but I'm certainly scared by it, and I have enough media literacy to know that's when I should be really careful not to be fooled.

The difficulty here is that the diseases happen years or decades after the exposer, sometimes.

The industrial setting offers the hints that there might be a problem but, as you rightly point out, also might just be a case of too much exposure.

An example of this is radiation exposure, it took an embarrassingly long time for society to link radiation to cancer, and that was a somewhat obvious link. Radioactive beverages were literally marketed as health beverages because of their radium content.

It is about the money:" The “black” in plastics is due to the addition of carbon black, which is basically a form of soot produced by the incomplete combustion of coal, petroleum or vegetable matter. It is added to plastics as a reinforcing substance, the same reason for which it finds widespread use in tires. Another benefit is that carbon black absorbs ultraviolet radiation that can cause plastics to degrade. Now for the problems. Carbon black contains numerous compounds, some of which, like the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), have carcinogenic properties and have led the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to categorize carbon black as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” Whether this is an issue in the containers used for many prepared foods, including those that are to be microwaved, is not clear, since the carbon black is locked within the matrix of the plastic and may not leach out in any significant amounts. Prepared food marketers like the black containers because they are cheap and are visually more appealing than their clear counterparts. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/environment-did-you-know/d...

It's a tricky subject to get solid numbers on as most studies focus on just a limited number of the thousands of PFAs now in our environment. There's also the issue of identifying the source of the PFAs as they're in our water etc. Also, due to their very slow breakdown, PFAs are likely to accumulate in our bodies over time.

There's more information on our current understanding here: https://www.epa.gov/pfas/our-current-understanding-human-hea...

There may be no investigation of your specific question, but is there evidence of known dangerous chemicals. If it was covered in dog poop, would you use it unless there was evidence that the use of dog-poop-covered spatula at the exposure level of domestic cooking caused significant physiological effects?

A more fundamental error is say 'there's no proof, therefore I assume it's false'. There's no proof that it's safe either. We make almost all decisions without mass longitudinal studies.

And worse, IMHO, is the poison rhetoric: 'If I can shoot their plane, I'm smarter than the person trying to fly.'

Journalists I get. They're paid to attract eyeballs and they're not above being a little misleading in pursuit of that goal. "When a man's salary depends..." and all that jazz. I see it the same way I see cops who are misleading on the stand, despicable but understandable.

The people who's moral compass seems far more faulty are the people in the comments who are doing the same thing but who have no comparable motive to behave in such a way. Generally, though there are a couple minor examples in here today.

Oxo claims they use Eastman Tritan Renew recycled plastics [1] which are FDA and EFSA certified for food use[2].

That said, I’ve personally been to multiple cookware factories in China and Taiwan and saw bags of Dow thermoplastic resins next to various cheaper-by-half China brands. The reason name brands go with Dow is the consistency in Pantone color matching colored parts. For black, it would be trivial for the contract manufacturer to cost-down to (toxic) China brands without the client (Oxo) ever knowing. It would also be trivial to spot check these products on a mass spectrometer for heavy metal contamination but I never saw that done.

If this kind of thing is important to you, I wouldn’t stop at just using Oxo but Oxo made in Asia. And if that’s your threshold you may as well use silicone.

I have worse stories about non-stick pan factories.

[1] https://www.oxo.com/corporate-responsibility/better-products

[2] https://www.eastman.com/en/products/brands/tritan/about/safe...

Just don't use plastic for cooking.

We need to eliminate plastic wherever possible, especially where it might come into contact with food.

What I hate is even paper containers have plastic lids. I worry the plastic snap-off lid is shedding microplastics into my orange juice, or by beef is getting plastic strands when I cut in to the vacuum sealed packaging.

Dispose of it ASAP.

You sure are leaning-in to that username...

Carbon black can also be produced from vegetable matter and is labelled as E153 in the EU for colouring food.

It would appear that it's the PAH content of petroleum derived carbon black that is the carcinogenic component

https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/2592

Or a gift link: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/10/black-pla...

(@dang, please consider using it as the main link.)

We also need trash collection, otherwise people are forced to burn plastic to get rid of their trash. The whole city of Kinshasa is nauseating due to this.

Even in developed countries like the US a lot of people burn fossil fuels for indoor cooking, even when they could choose a better alternative.

Your coffee maker is exposed to at most 100 degrees C. Spatulas are exposed to temperatures over 200 C.

Instinctively, I'm much more worried about the latter, though I admittedly don't know anything about the science behind what temperatures flame retardants or other undesirable contaminants might leach out of the plastic.

My read of this article is that the main problem comes from black plastic that claims to be made of recycled material being contaminated.

It's admittedly been a while since I've looked but there don't seem to be any (automated) drip makers whose use doesn't result in plastic coming into contact with hot water.

I'm well aware of and own many of the more manual options that don't have this issue. However, the automatic feature is killer (heh) and this seems like an obvious miss by manufacturers.

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>Every time I go over to mom's place it's so shocking to see these utensils being used for high heat applications they were never meant to be used for.

>educating her about how much plastic and teflon she has (and by extension I have) been eating over the years but it's in one ear and out the other.

I have much the same problem, though luckily I haven't lived with her for ages. According to her, eating plastic and teflon isn't a problem because she's so old that it's not going to make a difference.

yes unfortunately mps are in the air from tires now.

FYI most coffee cups which appear to be paper are also plastic lined.

The real solution is sunsetting single-use anything for any other applications outside bio labs or medical procedures. But $$$

Just drink in a civilized manner from a porcelain cup in a civilized cafe then the whole problem is avoided.

I wouldn't worry too hard about the coffee cup lid. It's almost certainly made of PLA (polylactic acid). Nobody's making flame-retardant consumer appliances out of PLA.

It's wild how something as simple as a coffee lid can become a point of scrutiny

I minimize my use of nonstick pans to as little as possible but some things are pretty much impossible to cook in stainless steel pans. Like how would you go about making over easy eggs? That’s something I have a lot of.

people generally don't use metal tools on enameled cast iron, which is plenty strong

Silicone is a rubber, not a plastic and black silicone should be fine.

ok this is far more informative n coherent

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004565352...

"This study sought to determine whether black plastic household products sold on the U.S. market contained emerging and phased-out FRs and whether polymer type was predictive of contamination."

and they do say its mostly abs, followed by hips , then pp; and do not say anything about other colors and other materials, plastic or not.

I'll add one: is nylon plastic?

Glass Tupperware also just feels better, like more mature. Wished I switched sooner.

This is correct. Sadly, this is also unhelpful. As long as you can't guarantee that the cooking utensil is from newly-made and clean black plastic from a reputable source, there is still risk. Think about a random convenience store item. OTOH e.g. a green or red utensil is free from that particular risk (unless a new investigation finds something for these types).

That is, a reputable source, e.g. an established cookware company, may proclaim that their existing black plastics are fine, safe for cookware, and have been tested. But a smart move for them would be to stop using black plastics for cookware, because a customer will just remember one highly reductionist association: "cookware + black plastic = poison". It's not always true, but it may sometimes be true, and that's enough.

Even if the particular research will be found lacking by new investigations and reproduction attempts, a lot of people will still remember this association for years, due to its shock value, simplicity, and trust to The Atlantic (which is generally a really good resource).

> So there is no reason to fear black plastic from reputable sources.

But how do you even judge that? My coffee machine is all black plastic. It has dozens of parts. The hot water runs by/over black plastic.

It's an expensive and reputable brand of coffee machine, but I have absolutely no illusions that some/most of the black plastic parts it contains are straight from different factories in China.

And I would be surprised if anybody QAs the chemical makeup of raw plastic input. As long as the parts mold correctly and hold up structurally, nobody would notice when the Chinese injection molder changes suppliers mid-batch.

The recycled plastic may, indeed, be worse than "virgin", but any plastic melting in your food seems ill advised. I'm not a zealot refusing to drink out of a plastic cup, but spatulas see a lot more heat than most cookware. My wife and I noticed our plastic spatulas (including one from a well known "reputable" brand) showing signs of melting years ago, and into the trash they went. Seems pretty reasonable to me.

I don't think it's worth nit-picking in this case.

Everyone wants to reduce their plastic intake, but nobody wants to throw 80% in their kitchenware in the trash. There's no obvious steps you can get people to follow to check if their spatula is one of the "good" ones, so tossing black plastic is a good concrete step to advise people to take.

Are you sure there's absolutely nothing wrong with virgin plastics? Maybe it'd be safer and simpler to just avoid plastic in e.g. cooking since the growing amount of research about effects of plastics doesn't seem very positive.

Silicone rubber itself is much more inert than carbon-based polymers, but it could always contain undesirable additives. Hopefully such additives would not be used in food-contact products and silicone does not need at all some of the additives frequently used in plastic products, like flame retardants.

This said, the parent article recommends silicone utensils among the safer alternatives.

According to https://www.greenmatters.com/p/is-silicone-recyclable I wouldn't worry about it. If it's recycled, doesn't appear to be recycled into cooking utensils.

It was called out at the end of the article as an alternative to black plastic, so I think it is fine?

No - silicone isn't a plastic and is much better for food preparation.

They make a glass aeropress that comes with a stainless steel cap now.

The Aeropress is made in the USA. While not a guarantee it's safe it's much more likely to not contain contaminants.

Even if you don’t care about chemicals, plastic does in my experience absorb a lot of “burnt/old” coffee flavor, especially if it goes through rubber/plastic/silicone tubing.

I can recommend porcelain pour over and paper filters. I fill up around 1L in the morning with hot water from the boiler. It’s very boring and non-fancy, takes about as much time as a coffee maker (pouring is slower but cleaning is faster). Use a thermos if you want it hot for longer. Great flavor for non-snobs.

I just went through a whole thing trying to get rid of plastic from my coffee setup, since I make coffee almost every day (sometimes twice). I couldn't find any plastic-free drip coffee makers, other than maybe the Ratio 8. In the end, I settled for a Chemex and doing pour over, which I've actually really enjoyed. So I recommend that if the plastics are giving you pause, although I can imagine giving up your Moccamaster is a hard sell! How do you like it, by the way?

Just checked my Moccamaster and it says that it uses PET 7 plastic, which supposedly designates "other" resin. Not sure what that means if anything for food safety.

As far as I know, burning a clear PET water bottle is harmless as it only releases carbon dioxide (and water vapor).

PET is the opposite of flame-retardant, BTW. Light the top of a clear PET water bottle and it'll often burn like a candle (though much faster).

It strongly depends on which plastic. PVC is the really nasty one.

You’re falling down that slippery slope pretty fast there.

You can filter your tap water; there are various ways to do so. I’m sorry your water is contaminated. That’s awful.

I wouldn’t always assume the worst with the cows milk and butter. There is a wide range of product and conditions out there.

Certain kinds of plastics and applications are known to leach chemicals far worse than others. Frozen peas in plastic? It’s minimal. Food pouches for kids? Awful - it’s liquid that’s heated in the plastic to pasteurize it.

You can get olive oil in glass very easily. It’s usually the default. I order from the Napa valley olive oil company in bulk - glass jars with high quality oil that used to be excellent value. They’ve gone up in price but still decent value compared to the market.

At least in the US butter comes in wax paper

If you eat a lot of fruit (I guess not seeing your tastes), you almost don't need to drink extra water, or very few, and vegetable water is extra pure and super valuable. Trees should be so much protected, they're doing a hell of a job

you could buy oil in glass bottles. also if buying larger quantities it comes in some type of metal container.

ALL my black plastic utensils are OXO and I'll be damned if I'm throwing them all out. They'll have to pry them from my room temperature dead carcinogenic fingers.

The main problem here is that many people use non-stick cookware, and metal spatulas will scratch them up badly. Plastic or rubber spatulas don't do that.

Of course, you can say that they shouldn't use non-stick cookware, but they are, so...

If you have a teflon frying pan, using metal damages the surface. I wouldn't think eating teflon bits is good either.

How about silicone ones?

Does any of this matter in a normal life?

Will I actually see actual difference if I throw away all my cook ware and replace it with non-non-stick ones and wooden utensils?

What about pollutants in the air from car and industry exhaust? Is this cookware worse? Should we first consider moving somewhere else than worry about cookware?

What about just the ingredients you cook with? Is using teflon worse than buying highly processed foods? What about GMO vs non-GMO? What about grass fed/free range vs in-prison-meats? What about vegan vs meat?

What I am trying to say is that it is easy to point to something that is (or even might be) toxic and say that we should fix it, but we have to put things in context. You simply can not be afraid of everything. Like drinking out of plastic vs glass vs metal, I know people who swear that drinking from a plastic cup is about the worst thing you can do, but I have been doing it my whole life and at least aren't dead yet.

Tempered glass does not contain plastic. No glass contains plastic. The formula to make glass has been known for centuries. Tempering is a thermal process, it doesn’t change the chemistry of the product. Old school pyrex involved the addition of Boron —- no hydrocarbons in the mix.

Modern Pyrex is ordinary glass, mostly, and sometimes strengthened glass.

Old Pyrex was borosilicate glass.

From what I know, Teflon is neutral as long as you don't overheat it and breathe in the gas. Can you point some sources stating otherwise?

> One thing I'm not aware of is if Pyrex or the other tempered glasses are safe or if they also contain plastic.

They're glass. They don't contain this. In particular, oven-safe glass is supposed to be of the borosilicate variety... but about 20 years ago manufacturing was moved to China (haha!). They're not properly formulated or tempered anymore, and in many cases not oven safe. They tend to shatter with large temperature changes, spilling hot casseroles over people who aren't in the habit of having steaming hot casserole showers and then complain about those.

> Just use metal wood or glass.

I like those materials, but think of the damage you're doing to the CPI with your advice. How would we combat inflation if we weren't able to constantly substitute in cheaper packaging materials and so forth?

I never use glass for cooking. I've had two Pyrex dishes explode on me. One was contained in an oven, thankfully, so that all that was lost was a week's worth of chicken. The other, unfortunately, shattered in the "kitchen" of my studio apartment, 5 feet from my bed. I had to spend the next hour using a flashlight to try to find and pick up the tiny shards that had flown everywhere.

A lot of vintage glass things including Pyrex contain high levels of lead. I need to look into it more, but it seems to be from paint or colors added, and clear glass items are likely fine.

> you can scrub and scrape them

Though you won't need to scrub very long if you use this:

https://barkeepersfriend.com/products/cookware-cleanser-poli...

Because of chemistry I don't understand, oxalic acid is amazing at removing burnt on food.

I kept saying this for a decade but no one listens, even my mom.

Consider all outside food is toxic too.

I did the same. I still use cast iron and ceramic though.

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>Just cook with stainless steel, it's not that hard

i've cooked a lot for a long time, and I have never gotten stainless steel to not stick absolutely everything (except water for pasta :)

I use cast iron and anodized aluminum and they are slippery AF

I want to but my eggs stick like crazy. I’ve even tried all the tips too like oil when droplets float, etc.

This - its super easy. I use an IR temp gun and once the pan is 170, add 1 tbsp. of butter, and it never sticks. I've showed friends and they still insist on their nasty Teflon/non-stick crap.

If you're speaking of an electric water kettle, my advice is throw it out. At least where I live (Germany) you can buy good quality electric water kettles with seamless stainless steel container for well under €50,— (I bought mine a quarter of a century ago for €25,—), so there's very little incentive to save money. I once had an impossibly cheap water kettle with open heating coils. That thing not only smelled of plastics but the water was ruined, too. Add to that that open heating coils have a reputation of shedding nickel into the water. Just say no.

Does it count if the black plastic part is not in contact with the water/food? The inside of my kettle is stainless steel, but the lid is black plastic (not directly in contact with water)

what bothers me is the black plastic handles on pots and pans when cooking with gas. they get way to hot and produce a strong odor that makes me worry about what kind of gasses are released there that i am breathing in.

Awareness is the first step

If the family is thinking rationally, it will notice that restaurants have less of an incentive to get rid of black plastic cooking utensils than they themselves do -- and will react by tending to eat out less.

The difference for me is that this can easily be something I'm using every day, so it's believable that there might be a cumulative effect. The replacement cost is trivial, and I need to do it approximately once per decade, so I might as well chuck out and replace my battered plastic spoons and spatulas now while it's fresh in my mind then not think about it again. But the rest of your list... I don't think of myself as particularly healthy, or particularly observant in this regard, but I ran through it and honestly most of the answers are "no":

> Does the kitchen of the restaurant I’m eating at care about that?

I'd worry less about one-offs than I would about long-term exposure here.

> Am I still going to drink 2 whiskeys tonight?

Possibly, and if I was going out tonight there might be wine. I'm not, I haven't been to a sit-down restaurant since September, and I don't have anything like that in the calendar for a few weeks.

> Anyone got any tiny individually wrapped shitty Halloween candy?

Nope. None in the house.

> How do those synthetic made-in-x-country gym clothes feel against your skin?

Levi's and a cotton shirt. Probably terrible for other reasons, but today isn't awful on the synthetic-fibres front. That's not true every day, but coincidentally I'm getting away with it right now.

> Wanna have a cigar?

I don't smoke.

> Are you breathing recycled air during an airline flight?

Haven't been on a plane in over a year, haven't flown long-haul in five.

> When was the last time you stretched your legs?

20 minutes ago. (purely by chance. Couple of hours before that, though).

> When’s the next time you’ll drink a plastic bottle of water?

This isn't something I regularly do. Might go months between them.

> Got a k-cup?

No.

> What’s the inner workings of that coffee machine do with the near boiling hot water?

The wonderful thing about pour-over coffee is that the inner workings are outer workings. It's slightly-less-than-boiling water on enamel into glass, and that's about it.

> When was the last time it was cleaned?

Lunchtime, when I gave it an extra rinse.

> What chemical was used on your toilet that your buttcheeks are now sitting on?

Mostly vinegar, as far as I can tell. Bleach for the ceramic, but I'm not sitting on that bit.

> Want some bacon? How bout a hot dog?

Yes. But sadly I do not have bacon. Or a hot dog. Nor can I exactly recall when the last time I had either was - over a month, certainly, probably more.

> Been outside recently without sun screen?

Yes, but given that I've been wearing a raincoat outside for the last month I don't think that's quite as relevant as it might be for others.

> I honestly think I just might forget and continue living in my blip of existence.

I'm not pointing any of this out as a superiority or a gotcha thing, but "continue living" pretty sums up my feelings about most of this stuff too. I'm not doing anything actively, really, to avoid pretty much all of the things you've brought up. Inevitably that's partially luck of the draw: I'm sure there are plenty of other examples you could give that I'd be equally at risk from, or worse. But it is striking just how alien that list of concerns is, from my point of view.

I think that says a lot more about differences in culture and choice architectures than it does about our personal preferences. You evidently do feel that there's an overbearing weight of attentiveness needed on avoiding more bad stuff, whereas I'm lucky enough to be in a situation where the mental effort to rule out Yet Another Thing just doesn't register. And I'm not sure what the right solution to that is.

That's not the kind of spatula they're talking about, I've rarely seen that kind be black. I'm pretty sure they mean the flat offset kind you'd use to flip eggs or pancakes.

As mentioned, the article is talking about plastic flippers, not silicone spatulas, but either way, I would recommend this [1] spatula set instead.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KSMBL26

These days "rubber" could just be some synthetic plastic like in car tires. It's less likely to be natural rubber.

Most modern spatulas are silicone, those aren't typically recycled.

> They're toxic

* When heated to high temperatures

Below 450F or so they don't react with anything. PTFE won't react with your egg you're frying, or the inside of your knee. (PTFE is used in surgical implants, among other things that can safely go inside your body)

This myth needs to die. Teflon is only an issue at temperatures you're just not going to encounter in a kitchen.

And if you did encounter such temperature, and you had oil on the pan - well you've poisoned yourself more than the Teflon would!

'Researchers from Harvard Chan School found that three types of flame retardants, called TDCIPP, TPHP, and mono-ITP, can have a major impact on pregnancies. The study followed 211 women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF), and found that 80% of them showed evidence of the chemicals in their urine. Women with the highest levels of exposure fared the worst, with a wide range of effects:10% lower chance of a successful fertilization31% lower chance of the embryo implanting in the uterus41% fewer clinical pregnancies (where fetal heartbeat is confirmed by ultrasound)38% fewer live births https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/subtopics/flame-retard...

> when I interviened with my simple method,of removing things where there can be no (health/physiological) down side.

Removing spaces after punctuation has the physiological downside of making my eye twitch.