Cooking with any plastic is a dubious enterprise, because heat encourages potentially harmful plastic compounds to migrate out of the polymers and potentially into the food. But, as Andrew Turner, a biochemist at the University of Plymouth recently told me, black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid.
In 2018, Turner published one of the earliest papers positing that black plastic products were likely regularly being made from recycled electronic waste. The clue was the plastic’s concerning levels of flame retardants. In some cases, the mix of chemicals matched the profile of those commonly found in computer and television housing, many of which are treated with flame retardants to prevent them from catching fire.
I only use wooden spoons, spatulas and cutting boards myself. And fire retardants are obviously damaging to health, so throwing out black plastic is a good idea. But I don’t think the article gives any good reason to avoid plastic in general. “Potentially harmful plastic compounds” sounds a lot like “compounds with zero evidence of being dangerous but they sound scary”. Happy to be proven wrong though.
