The black spatula was recently identified as an unexpected source of danger. A slew of coverage followed a research paper suggesting that toxic flame retardants in recycled black plastic could be leaching into food at hazardous levels. Your cool black kitchenware could be slowly poisoning you, one newspaper warned and a reasonable reader may have shared the Atlantic’s conclusion that the only safe course of action was to eliminate this ubiquitous and previously understated item. The peer-reviewed paper turned out to have miscalculated the dosage by a factor of 10, but the research lifted a lid on the normally hidden, and apparently murky, world of plastic recycling. So should we re-admit the black spatula into the cutlery drawer or is there genuine cause for concern?
