Throw out your black spatula

[Steve Miller]

You can get a set of 15 silicone kitchen utensils for some $20 on Amazon.

Couldn’t hurt.

[AndyD]

So I made a pile of plastics, a worn cutting board, old scratched trifle bowl we use for mixing, salad tongs, almost new black nylon spatula, two measuring cups.

Not much, we have and mostly use wood or glass alterntives.

Told MrsA. Asked if she'd like a cuppa?
And sighed
https://groceries.morrisons.com/products/nutmeg-home-classic-kettle-black/113488049

Does it count?

[ShiroKuro]

@AndyD oof.

I suppose what matters is the color, and material, on the inside of the pot?

[AndyD]

Black plastic and a rusting steel plate at the bottom.

Luckily it was such a bargain at £7.99 two years ago, I bought a spare
Yes, we have another in unopened box in the garage

[Nina]

Parchment paper? Nooooo ....

[Steve Miller]

@Nina

But not all parchment paper, apparently.

[RealPlayer]

My daughter has a bunch of those old soft plastic drinking glasses in weird colors with embedded glitter in them. The exteriors are sticky, and you can feel roughness on the insides, so you know some of that plastic ends up in your drink. Yet she insists on glass food containers.

I think it’s time for an intervention.

[ShiroKuro]

Wait I missed the part about parchment paper….

[AndyD]

Kettles, good grief, what a can of worms.
Britain, tea drinkers of something like 40billion cups annually do not manufacture a single electric kettle!

Nearest non plastic electric kettle that's also not made in China appears to be (no not french or german...)
Italian.

I'm tempted to get a traditional small hob kettle.

[wtg]

@AndyD I know. I finally settled for a Chinese made (mostly) glass electric kettle a couple of years ago when I retired my Simplex. The Chefman does have a black plastic lid that water condenses on and drips back down into the kettle, probably not a good thing.

I came close to incinerating the Simplex when I put water on to boil and then popped out to the back yard to take care of some gardening task or another. I'd be out there a little longer than expected and suddenly realize that the kettle was boiling dry. After the third near-miss I decided a kettle with auto-shutoff was probably a good idea. I still have the Simplex in the basement. Maybe I'll put it back to work, at least for the winter months when I'm mostly inside...

[AndyD]

I suppose hob kettles ideally need to whistle.

My replacement choices for our black plastic cylinder:

https://www.globalkitchenjapan.com/products/ikenaga-cast-iron-contemporary-design-round-tetsubin-kettle

https://ottonifabbrica.com/en/3-kettles
(in cherry red)

Who knew where a spatula thread could lead!

[ShiroKuro]

That testubin is very handsome!

[AdagioM]

Parchment papers don’t list their ingredients, so I can’t tell if the Kroger paper I’m using is going to kill me. But I don’t use it often.

I do have a couple of Silpat silicone baking sheets; I could start using them more. They never feel quite clean, though, even after soapy Dawn dishwashing.

[Daniel]

I believe all these materials and surfaces are dangerous as well as eating and drinking from anything made of plastic.

My Dr. was talking with me about this once and said-- "We all have so much stuff in us."

I think we were talking about radioactive substances used in medical testing.

I'd like to be but I'm not purist on this topic. I don't like plastic containers because they're near impossible to hand wash. On the other hand, if I want to drink water or cold tea in a plastic bottle then I do it.

Some synthetic material spatulas in my home have have been actually burned.

This is when I make an executive decision and put them in the garage.

When in doubt throw it out.

[Axtremus]

https://arstechnica.com/health/2024/12/huge-math-error-corrected-in-black-plastic-study-authors-say-it-doesnt-matter/

The "black spatula" study's authors made a mistake and left out a zero, their results were off by an order of magnitude. The "black spatula" is still bad, but not as bad as originally portrayed.

[wtg]

oopsies....

[Piano*Dad]

Yes, they multiplied 70 x 6,000 and got 42,000.

This is even worse than the paper that a bunch of us got retracted from a major dermatology journal.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7373684/#:~:text=To the Editor%3A Recent observations,hospitalized for severe COVID-19 .

The authors boldly claimed (based on simple correlations) that baldness raised the likelihood of severe Covid. They didn't bother to control for age in their regression. A bunch of us on Twitter raised a ruckus and the journal had to put a retraction notice on the paper, saying the result was "preliminary."

I didn't throw out my black plastic cookware, by the way.

[wtg]

@Piano-Dad said in Throw out your black spatula:

I didn't throw out my black plastic cookware, by the way.

Neither did I.

When the popular media started reporting on the study, I tried to read the study in the journal but hit a paywall. I had a sneaking suspicion it wasn't the fiasco it was being made out to be. The article @Axtremus posted did a great job of summarizing the study methodology and results, much better than anything I'd read previously. After reading the AT article this morning, I was underwhelmed by the original results. Add this correction....meh....

My friend tossed all her utensils immediately after reading the news articles a few weeks ago. Her response this morning after reading the Ars Technica article:

Oh my. And I threw away and replaced all with silicone ones that spot badly in dishwasher and need to be washed by hand. Drives me crazy. I was just complaining about this last night.

Geeze

[ShiroKuro]

We didn’t throw anything out either. Fortunately.

Btw @wtg if you ever want a paywalled article from an academic journal article, let me know. Often I can get them thru my uni affiliation and I’d be happy to download them for you!

[Mik]

I guess Janet got wind of all this. A new set of silicone utensils arrived today. Surely this portends they will be found to be far worse.