If you own a black plastic spatula, there is a reasonable chance it started life as part of a television.
That sounds like an exaggeration. It isn’t — it is the mechanism a 2024 study describes, and it explains a finding that surprised a lot of people, including us.
The study
What was actually tested
In late 2024, researchers led by Megan Liu at Toxic-Free Future published work in the journal Chemosphere examining black-coloured plastic household products — kitchen utensils, take-out containers, children’s toys — looking for flame retardants, including compounds that are banned or restricted.
What they found
~85%
of the black plastic products analysed contained flame retardants
22,800 ppm
total flame retardants in the worst item tested — black plastic toy pirate coins — close to 3% of the object’s weight
The levels varied enormously from one product to the next. That variation is itself the point: there is no way to tell, by looking at a black plastic tool, which end of that range it sits at.
Source: Liu et al., Chemosphere (2024). Widely covered by CNN and CBC.
The mechanism
Where the chemicals come from
This is the part that makes the whole thing make sense.
Flame retardants are added to the plastic casings of electronics — televisions, monitors, appliance housings — because those things get hot and sit near power. That is a legitimate use.
The problem is what happens at the end of an electronic device’s life. When black plastic from e-waste is recycled, it gets mixed into the stream that becomes new black plastic goods. The flame retardants come along for the ride. The researchers found higher levels in the plastic types typical of electronics — which is precisely the link they were testing.
So it isn’t that anyone decided to put flame retardants in your spatula. It is that black plastic is hard to sort, and the recycling stream carries what came before.
Reading it honestly
What this study does and does not say
We will be careful here, because a lot of the coverage was not.
What it establishes: these compounds are present, at measurable and sometimes high levels, in everyday black plastic objects, including ones used with food.
What it does not establish: that using a specific spatula caused harm to a specific person. The study measured contamination in products. Dose, migration into food, and health outcomes are separate questions that this paper was not designed to answer.
That distinction matters. It is also, honestly, not very reassuring — “we found restricted flame retardants in most of the items and we don’t yet know how much gets into your dinner” is not a sentence that makes anyone relax.
The other thing black plastic utensils do
Set the chemistry aside for a moment; there is a simpler issue.
Plastic utensils are used against hot pans. Nylon and polypropylene tools are typically rated somewhere around 200–220°C, and a dry pan on a high burner goes past that easily. That is why so many kitchen drawers contain a spatula with a melted, warped edge — and every millimetre that softened, scraped or deformed went somewhere.
It is the same mechanism we looked at on the chopping side, where the amount has actually been measured: what a plastic cutting board sheds into food over a year.
The alternatives
What to use instead
There are three sensible options, and they are not equivalent.
Wooden tools have one more quality that is hard to price: they are the only ones in the drawer that get better looking with use. Keeping them that way is genuinely a five-minute job — the same routine as a board, which we walk through in how to clean and oil a wood cutting board.
If you change one thing
Start with the tool that touches heat
If you want to change one thing this week, change the spatula and the spoon you cook with. They take the most abuse, they see the highest temperatures, and they are the cheapest to replace.
The rest of the drawer can wait. And if you are working through the kitchen object by object, the board is the other surface worth looking at — it is the one your knife is actively removing material from, three times a day.
Keep reading
Related guides
Microplastics in Food: Where They Come From in Your Kitchen
Do Plastic Cutting Boards Really Shed Microplastics?
How to Clean and Oil a Wood Cutting Board
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
Should I throw out my black plastic utensils?
The study did not measure how much of these compounds migrates from a utensil into food, so it cannot tell you that any single tool is unsafe. A reasonable middle path: replace the ones that meet high heat first — the spatula and the cooking spoon — and retire anything already melted, warped or scraped.
Are non-black plastic utensils safer?
The flame-retardant finding is specifically tied to black plastic, because black is the colour e-waste plastic is most easily recycled into and the hardest to sort. Non-black plastic tools avoid that particular route, but they still soften and shed against hot pans.
Do wooden utensils need special care?
Very little. Hand-wash, dry them standing up rather than lying flat, and give them a coat of food-grade mineral oil when water stops beading on the surface — roughly once a month. Never the dishwasher.
Getting plastic out of the kitchen, one object at a time
We make solid acacia cutting boards, built end grain. Wooden kitchen tools are next.
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Study referenced: Liu et al., Chemosphere (2024), on flame retardants in black plastic consumer products. This article is for general information and isn’t medical advice. Research on these compounds and human exposure is ongoing.