We warned you last month to “Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula.” In a recent study conducted about consumer products, researchers concluded kitchen utensils had some of the highest levels of flame retardants, which you do not want anywhere near your hot food. After the article was published, its author received reports, possibly exaggerated, of people in Burlington, Vermont, throwing their black plastic spatulas out en masse. You should too. That article was just the appetizer. This episode of Radio Atlantic is the entire meal, coming to you in time for Thanksgiving. We talk to its author, staff writer Zoë Schlanger, about every other plastic thing in your kitchen: cutting boards, nonstick pans, plastic wrap, slow cookers, sippy cups. Read it before you cook. And prepare to hassle your plastic-loving hosts. Politely. --- Share understanding this holiday season. For less than $2 a week, give a year-long Atlantic subscription to someone special. They’ll get unlimited access to Atlantic journalism, including magazine issues, narrated articles, puzzles, and more. Give today at TheAtlantic.com/podgift. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What are the health risks of using plastic spatulas?
Yeah, it's not the best. It's great that he's eating leftovers. We don't like food waste either. Right, right. Yeah, microwaving plastic is one of those ones that I just don't do anymore. So heat degrades plastic. Right. Cold, my understanding is that cold actually makes plastic a bit more chemically stable, at least in the short term.
But then I have seen at least one paper that found that the cycle of heating and freezing, if you use the same container to do both many times, will also enhance chemistry. degradation and also enhance those plasticizers leaching out. And that was a study that was looking at actually farmers.
They put these big plastic tarps over their fields to suppress weeds, and those get heated and frozen over and over again. So I assume you could apply that to consumer plastic goods too. It's all polymers. It's all the same base material, but... That was done in farm fields. Interesting.
So is where we've landed with plastic no plastic at all or use the hardest plastic you can find? Like, what about those very sturdy plastic containers or are we just going for Pyrex glass?
I have now transitioned entirely to glass in my own kitchen. Wow. And I think that that's more of a, like, sort of risk tolerance thing. It's like we all do things that will slowly kill us, and it's sort of choosing which things those are. I mean, we're bombarded by problematic compounds in every aspect of our life, and you cannot eliminate them all.
So if you want to use your sturdy plastic containers to store fat-neutral things like crackers, that's probably fine.
Mm-hmm. I think what you're saying is that I should send my son to school with his leftovers in a glass Pyrex container.
Yeah, it's heavier, which is a pain, but I'm saying yes, definitely. You're saying yes. And I don't know how old your kids are, but some of these things matter a lot for children because one of the big concerns about plastic additives getting into our bodies is that they mimic cells. estrogen and can have endocrine disrupting properties, meaning they mess with your hormone system.
And for a developing hormone system in a child, that's especially crucial. It's also crucial for pregnant people or, you know, people of childbearing age. So there's different moments when it's really critical to avoid this stuff.
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