While offering a correction and admitting they made a colossal math error, the scientists behind the “black plastic kitchen utensils are the tool of the devil” study are not backing off.
A recent study set off alarm bells about the amount of flame retardant people are ingesting from their black plastic kitchen utensils. The thing is, their math was way off. Having issued a correction revealing that Satan’s spatula poison us below the EPA’s approved levels, it seems the scientists would rather just say “well, none would be better.”
However, the authors missed a zero and reported the EPA’s safe limit as 42,000 ng per day for a 60 kg adult. The error made it seem like the estimated exposure was nearly at the safe limit, even though it was actually less than a tenth of the limit.
“[W]e miscalculated the reference dose for a 60 kg adult, initially estimating it at 42,000 ng/day instead of the correct value of 420,000 ng/day,” the correction reads. “As a result, we revised our statement from ‘the calculated daily intake would approach the U.S. BDE-209 reference dose’ to ‘the calculated daily intake remains an order of magnitude lower than the U.S. BDE-209 reference dose.’ We regret this error and have updated it in our manuscript.”
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While being off by an order of magnitude seems like a significant error, the authors don’t seem to think it changes anything. “This calculation error does not affect the overall conclusion of the paper,” the correction reads. The corrected study still ends by saying that the flame retardants “significantly contaminate” the plastic products, which have “high exposure potential.”
Previously:
• Cooking with black plastic might not be good for you
This post was originally published on here
