Why Are You Still Cooking With That?

Well, it's Thanksgiving, the day on the American calendar centered most around food, when we gather together to cook for our families and friends. And in this episode, we're going to talk about our kitchens and the things in them that we should maybe be worrying about.
I'm Hannah Rosen. This is Radio Atlantic.
And this week, we're here to ruin your Thanksgiving. A little bit.
Just kidding. Mostly.
What I'm talking about is an Atlantic story from a few weeks ago that hit a nerve with people. The headline of that story was Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula.
And I'm joined in the studio by the author of that story, staff writer Zoe Schlanger, who writes about science and the environment. Hi, Zoe.
Hi, Hannah. I have a black plastic spatula.
Oh, no. I do.
I've been using it for so many years that I can't. You know what, Zoe? I have two black plastic spatulas.
Because the first one started melting? Because the first one just ate into my brain. It told you to acquire a second of its time.
It told me to acquire a second. Exactly.
So, okay. You said that black plastic utensils are probably leaching chemicals into our cooking.
And I want to understand why, but I will say that your story opened up a whole bunch of worries besides the spatula that I want to run by you, not just for me, but for a lot of my friends. And I'm sure that happened to you as well.
Oh, yes. Yeah.
Were a lot of people writing you? Everyone was texting me. Someone texted me that the entire town of Burlington, Vermont, was throwing their spatulas out the window at the same time.
You know what? I absolutely believe that. That's an incredible image.
Were people texting you like, what about this and what about that and what about this other thing? Absolutely. There's a lot of discussion about how to tell silicone apart from plastic, whether different color plastic was okay, which like, spoiler alert, probably not,

but black is worse. I feel like what's going to happen on Thanksgiving, sorry, everyone, happy Thanksgiving.
We really do wish you the best and most peaceful Thanksgiving, that people are going to be sneaking into, if they're not the cooks, they're going to be sneaking into the kitchen of whoever is cooking and like monitoring their kitchen utensils and implements just in case. I love us.

Yeah. Anyway, it's better than political arguments, so it's not so bad.
Okay, let's start with what you wrote about. Why should I throw out my black plastic spatula, which by the way, I haven't done.
It's only because you're here with me in person in the studio. So I have to convince you.
You have to convince me face to face because it sounds like other people you know have thrown theirs out, but I haven't. So the reason black plastic spatulas are particularly concerning, and I will caveat this by saying you should really throw out any plastic spatula you have of any color, but black plastic has this particularly noxious place in our product stream because it can't be fully recycled.
Recycling plants just ignore black plastic. They can't really see the plastic that's black because they use optical sensors.
So that means instead of coming from a clean recycling stream, some black plastic products seem to be made out of dubious recycled products, particularly e-waste, electronic waste, often abroad with very little oversight. And electronics are imbued often with flame retardants.
So we're talking about like the black plastic housing on your computer monitor or your cell phone or your keyboard. Those can all have flame retardants in them to keep them from catching fire.
And flame retardants are associated with a huge range of health hazards from, you know, cancer, diabetes, thyroid issues. And then they may end up remolded into implements that are touching your food, which they were never meant to be part of.
And then you use those implements with heat and oil, which are all things that, like, encourage these compounds in the plastic to migrate out of the object. And then you just eat a lot more of those gross things.
Well, that was a lot. I'm going to slow that down so I understand.
Okay, there were so many facts I learned in there. I just want to make sure I learned them correctly.
Black plastic is probably recycled from electronics. Right.
Not all of it is. Certainly, there could be new, pure black plastic that is not coming from recycled e-waste, but there's no way to tell.
Now, regular plastic in a recycling facility gets rid of these toxins. Is that what happens? Like it can notice them and get rid of them, but in black plastic, it just can't be treated properly? No, actually, there's lots of toxins in all recycled plastic, but we're mostly just talking about flame retardants here.
And in the U.S. and in lots of other places, there are laws against or rules against combining electronic waste with, like, the general consumer recycling flow.
So, really, these flame retardants are never supposed to get into your consumer products, but they are. Okay, so that's the black plastic.
It can have flame retardants in it. It might come from e-waste.
What about gray, white, red, all the other colors, spatulas? I do have two black ones and one gray one. So what about those? Why plastic, though? Well, first of all, from a purely utilitarian perspective, plastic's just a terrible thing to use when you're dealing with a hot pan.
I mean, the thing melts. It's just not a very durable product.
But plastic of all colors probably has stuff in it that you don't really want interacting with your food. I mean, at the very bottom of this long list is microplastics.
If you have a piece of plastic that you're using regularly in the kitchen, it's sloughing off microplastics into your food. No matter what.
This has nothing to do with heat. It's just giving off little flakes.
It's like use. Dandruff, just like plastic dandruff is coming off.
Exactly like dandruff. I mean, one thing I also noticed in people's kitchens is how common a plastic cutting board is.
And that's just you slicing chunks of plastic into your tomatoes every single time. And I get why people have it.
It's like easier to make it sanitary. They wash quite well.
But it's just not worth it. You can use anything else.
The other problem with most plastics is that there are other molecules in that material, in that base polymer, that are added there to make the plastic flexible or make it really thin. And those things are broadly called plasticizers.
They include things you might have heard of like phthalates that have also been associated with lots of harmful health outcomes. Basically, there's no good plastic, particularly not in your kitchen.
Okay, so no cutting boards. I'm not going to give you no good plastics yet.
I have to go through it a little slowly. What about storage containers? Like, I have just a million plastic storage containers.
Can you tell me more about them? Are they hard and sturdy, or are they like what you got your takeout in like seven months ago, and you're still using them? Both. Both.
I have a couple of these very hard ones with the click in tops, but then those get lost because those are the most used. So they end up in my kid's backpack and they end up at school.
And so then we just revert to the 3,000 takeout containers that we have sitting around. I can already see.

I already feel bad. Okay, what's coming? I mean, I get it.
It's like there's so much convenience to this. Yes.
So typically my understanding is one rule of thumb is that harder, sturdier plastic is maybe shedding fewer phthalates than the very flexible ones, but they could also be shedding other compounds of concern. And the thing about containers is that if you're putting something in that container that is fatty, if it has an oil, an animal fat, anything like that, lipids encourage these compounds to migrate out of the plastic and into the food.
These plasticizers I was talking about are lipophilic, meaning they easily transfer when in contact with fats. So we're often putting our leftovers in these bins, and almost always those have some kind of fat.
And then it also depends if you're heating things in that plastic. Heat is something that degrades plastic quite readily.
I see you smirking. I am going to confess something now.
This is what I think happens to most of us. We know and we don't know.
So we sort of know what you said, and then it goes into a short-term memory hole. So what I know and don't know is that my son loves leftovers.
He loves leftovers. Like, he'll take it over anything for lunch the next day.

Of course, he microwaves it. Like, of course, he puts it in the takeout container,

takes it to school, and then microwaves it. That's like a perfect storm, right? Yeah, it's not the best.
It's great that he's eating leftovers. We don't like food waste either.

Right, right.

Yeah, microwaving plastic is one of those ones that I just don't do anymore. So,

heat degrades plastic. Cold, my understanding is that cold actually makes plastic a bit more chemically stable, at least in the short term.
But then I have seen at least one paper that found that the cycle of heating and freezing, if you use the same container to do both many times, will also enhance degradation and also enhance those plasticizers leaching out. And that was a study that was looking at actually farmers.
They put these big plastic tarps over their fields to suppress weeds, and those get heated and frozen over and over again. So I assume you could apply that to consumer plastic goods too.
It's all polymers. It's all the same base material, but that was done in farm fields.
Interesting. So is where we've landed with plastic, no plastic at all, or use the hardest plastic you can find? Like, what about those very sturdy plastic containers, or are we just going for Pyrex glass? I have now transitioned entirely to glass in my own kitchen.
Wow. And I think that that's more of a, like, sort of risk tolerance thing.
It's like we all do things that will slowly kill us, and it's sort of choosing which things those are. I mean, we're bombarded by problematic compounds in every aspect of our life, and you cannot eliminate them all.
So if you want to use your sturdy plastic containers to store fat-neutral things like crackers, that's probably fine. I think what you're saying is that I should send my son to school with his leftovers in a glass Pyrex container.
Yeah, it's heavier, which is a pain, but I'm saying yes. You're saying yes.
And I don't know how old your kids are, but some of these things matter a lot for children because one of the big concerns about plastic additives getting into our bodies is that they mimic estrogen and can have endocrine-disrupting properties, meaning they mess with your hormone system. And for a developing hormone system in a child, that's especially crucial.
It's also crucial for pregnant people or, you know, people of childbearing age. So there's different moments when it's really critical to avoid this stuff.
Okay, so we have to throw out those plastics. We do have to cook, though.
We're back, you know, preparing the Thanksgiving meal. What is a substitute for the plastic spatula? What kind of spatulas do you have? I have silicone spatulas.
They're great.

Wooden spatulas and stainless steel spatulas.

Interesting.

I just got my first wooden spatula.

My friend's mother, who lives in Norway, gave it to me,

and it was like, you know, made by hand by her neighbor on the farm.

And I don't understand why I've never used a wood spatula before.

It's fantastic.

Like, it's so good.

It's a great material. I think people hate that you can't really put them in the dishwasher, but you just rinse it off.
No big deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, so silicone. Is silicone always okay? What is silicone? Silicone, to my understanding, is made out of a number of things, but notably silica, which is essentially sand, which is the same thing that glass is made out of.
So as far as we know now, silicone is inert. It's considered not reactive with food or with body material, with fat or anything like that.
So I think all signs right now point to silicone being a very good choice. I know that at very high temperatures, I think if you're baking at above 400 or 500 degrees, silicone can emit gas of some kind.

That might be a problem.

But if you have to bake in something that isn't stainless steel or ceramic or cast iron, it's not the worst thing in the world.

I'm pro-silicone for now.

Maybe we'll learn something else later.

When we return, Zoe and I keep going through the kitchen list, from sippy cups to gas stoves. All right, so no plastic spatulas, sort of no plastic storage containers.
I asked people on Instagram. I posted your article and I asked

people on Instagram and I got a lot of questions from people about other things in their kitchen. So can I run them by you? Please.
Okay. Number one, sippy cups.
They're always labeled as BPA free plastic. I remember that even when I had little kids, everything was BPA free.
Does that make a difference? In a way, it does. BPA was researched intensively, so now we know it's bad, and so now everyone's trying to avoid making things with it.
But then what companies went and did was create a bunch of alternatives to BPA, which at least some research finds is not any better than the BPA. The way that chemicals are regulated in this country is no one has to really prove they're safe before they go in the market.
And so we have a trickle of information coming out that suggests that the replacements aren't any better. I would say no to plastic sippy cups.
Whoa, whoa. You said it, though.
Okay, just to be very accurate about this, you said a trickle of information. So there was a kind of panic about BPA.
People created replacements for BPA, but we just don't know yet if they're better, and the early signs are that they may not be. Is that a fair summary? Exactly.
There was this moment in, like, 2015, 2016, when there was a smattering of studies coming out highlighting the BPA replacements and looking at their potential toxicity and finding that they might just be as endocrine disrupting as BPA was. So the thing with BPA is that it mimics estrogen in the body, which is not something you want to keep adding through your diet.
And it's associated with all kinds of issues, thyroid issues, fertility issues. And researchers on the few studies I saw back then found that the replacements were as estrogenic or more so.
Wow. Okay, I really want to Google what is a safe sippy cup, but instead I'm going to ask you, do you know what a safe sippy cup is? Yeah, I was actually talking to this pediatrician about this for a story, and she was talking about how the rest of the world gives their kids things in stainless steel containers.
Like, it's just, you know, you don't have plastic plates for kids. You just have stainless steel ones that they can throw on the floor.
And I know they make stainless steel ones with, like, the silicone sippy tops and stuff for kids now. It's interesting.
I think we think of stainless steel as something, like metallic. There's something that we resist about stainless steel, like it's going to taste different or something, but you're saying it's safer.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Oh, yeah.
You said that means it's definitely safer. Okay.
Another one that people ask me a lot about, a lot actually, were the black plastic lids on coffee cups. This just occurred to me recently.
I mean, yeah, presumably if it's black plastic, there is a chance it came from that material stream of recycled e-waste. And the last thing you want is scalding hot, you know, foamy, creamy coffee passing through a little black plastic hole into your mouth.
It's not ideal. So I actually just got coffee right before this and did not take a lid.
Yes, this is absolutely true. Someone sent me that request on Instagram, please ask Zoe about black plastic coffee lids.
Almost at the instant that the barista in the place that I was put the black plastic coffee lid on top of my coffee. And I had the same reaction you did.
I was like, of course, and just like flipped it right off again. Oh, boy.
Okay. So number two on Instagram that people asked a ton about, I bet you can guess, nonstick cookware.
Yeah. Like so many questions about nonstick cookware.
Are there different kinds? Do I throw it out the second it has a scratch on it? Like, what do I do about nonstick cookware? I think there's a whole bunch of sort of short-term memory hole feelings about it. Like, I kind of read this thing, but then I like my band, so I forgot about it.
Yeah. So I'd start by saying that the issue with nonstick, Teflon is one brand name for this, but there's a bunch of them.
Nonstick pans are coated in a class of chemicals called PFAS. And these are also coating things like our raincoats, our hiking boots, just anything that is nonstick is basically made out of these compounds that we've now found are very bad for our health in high concentrations.
So the people who are really affected by this are the ones living near a plant that made PFAS, and now their water supply has been contaminated for 30 years, or people who live near an army base where they are using a lot of firefighting foam, which is full of PFAS. But then you zoom in on like people using individual products and it becomes a little hazier.
We do know that the PFAS in your pan becomes unstable at high temperatures. So there's lots of warnings on these things that you're not really supposed to use them to cook at, you know, temperatures higher than 400 or 500 degrees.
But who doesn't accidentally leave their pan on the stove sometimes and scorch it, and then it smells terrible? You're breathing in fumes from PFAS, most likely. You mentioned scratched coatings.
It's super easy to scratch. Actually, the number one response to the throw out your black plastic spatula, when I was like, just get stainless steel ones, people were like, but it'll scratch my nonstick pan.
And I just, my response to that is throw out your nonstick pan. But we can't necessarily ask everyone to do that.
I get that it's so convenient to make an egg in a nonstick pan. I haven't done it in years, but I hear it's great.
That was amazing, Zoe. That was a great judgment, not judgment.
I don't mean to sound judgy, but honestly, cast iron is just so much better. I've recently come to that conclusion.
I cook almost, I noticed that my first reach for everything, including an egg these days, is my cast iron skillet. So I'm like, why don't I just get a few more of those and call it a day, you know? So you do not use nonstick pans.
So I grew up in a house with a parrot when I was young. And bird owners know that cooking with nonstick pans could result in the death of your bird.
So I just grew up not having them around. Why? I think it's because the gas volatilizes PFAS, the nonstick compound.
Its fumes get in the air, and birds are much more sensitive than humans, like all small animals. This is a literal canary in a coal mine.
Yeah, it's kind of like that. I feel like that image, more than anything you're going to say, is going to convince people that if they had a bird, that bird would be dead.
So these are real. I mean, yeah, I feel like it's the kind of thing with, like, dogs and chocolates.
Like, they won't die every time, but there was a chance. So he didn't have it in the house, but there was never a discussion about it being bad for human health.
It was just like, no, you have a pet bird. You can't have nonstick.
Wow. Okay.
So no nonstick pans. Another one that came up, and this is specifically related to Thanksgiving, marinating things in plastic.
Like it is something that people do. It's something that people do on Thanksgiving.
Is that a problem? I wouldn't do it. My understanding is that I was thinking about, like, sous vide bags, too, you know, like— Yeah, like brining turkeys or sous vide bags.
There's a whole bunch of ways that meat and plastic have to do with each other. It would violate my personal rule about like putting fatty things next to plastic

because I just know the chemistry of that

means it encourages migration of compounds

out of the plastic and into your food.

But my understanding is that the bags

specifically designed for this are considered food grade

and often, you know, can be labeled phthalate free now.

So there is knowledge about this in the consumer market enough for companies to make things that are less harmful. That's not to say they're not potentially problematic.
I mean, the way I think about this is everything could affect you negatively a little bit. And we are so bombarded by problematic things in our everyday life getting into our bodies.
And you just want to lower your dose. So it's kind of choosing how to lower your dose.
It's not that your turkey bag is going to kill you. It's that you're just adding a little extra.
And you don't need to. Right.
So if you needed to brine something and you put it in a, say, a glass bowl with plastic wrap on it, is it just that, oh God, okay, so no to that, just because the plastic wrap would touch it. So in fact, you should just use tinfoil, is what you're saying.
Or you just put a plate over it. Like, you don't even need all this stuff.
You know, plastic wrap's gone through all these iterations. It used to be made out of much more harmful stuff, and then they eliminated some of it.
I just avoid it. Really? You have no plastic wrap? No.
So you're making a cake. What do you put over it? You just put a cake topper? A bowl.
You put a bowl or a cake topper. Okay.
I'm trying to think of any other use I have for plastic wrap, particularly on Thanksgiving. I wrap, you know, you get cheese and you have to wrap it in something so it doesn't go bad immediately.
I have, this is going to make me sound so crunchy, but I have those like beeswax wraps. It's like cloth waxed in beeswax.
And that's what people, people just use wax paper for everything. You can just do that.
And you can reuse that. So that's good.
Okay. I'm already imagining some of the people listening to this podcast walking into the kitchen of their parents and friends and causing all kinds of trouble.
And this one is real trouble, but I'm going to ask you anyway because a couple people asked me about it. Natural gas stove.
So like hassling your friends or parents about their natural gas stove would be like a really, really low move. But I'm going to ask you anyway.
There's just so much talk about this. It was a big deal like a year ago.
What about it? So we know it's not great to be in a home with a natural gas stove. We know that it is associated with higher rates of child asthma, just breathing problems in general.
You're inhaling things like benzene. That said, many people have them.
I have one. I'm a renter in New York.
There's no way I'm not going to have a gas stove. I can't ask my landlord to buy a beautiful induction stove for me.
But one thing that makes a big difference is using your overhead vent. Just gently turning on your family's overhead vent while they're cooking can actually take a lot of the problematic compounds out of the air.
Oh, really? Yeah. Okay.
It's not totally a fail safe. It doesn't get it all out.
It would be nice if we all had induction stoves, but I also get, it does sometimes feel good to cook over fire. Yeah.
One day I will make the transition, but I, but the fire, like I'm so used to seeing the fire, but I understand. I will say that that is a really elaborate PR job by the natural gas industry too.
Do you remember this? There's this moment when they were like hiring Instagram influencers to to promote gastos and things like that. Because it's one of those things that seems good and natural, but is the exact opposite.
Like, it looks like the thing that you should be cooking things on, but in fact, it's the unnatural option. Yeah, that was pretty good.
Okay, so what else are we missing for Thanksgiving that we don't know about? Okay, one just came to me, parchment paper. Because I cook a lot with parchment.
I bake a lot with parchment paper. As do I.
And I only recently learned that some parchment paper is coated in PFAS. That's what makes it nonstick.
So you actually want to check. And I recently got parchment paper that's coated in silicone instead and is nice and nonstick because of that and And doesn't cost anymore.
Oh, really? So you have to look online and see what it's coated with. Interesting.
Anything else we've forgotten about the Thanksgiving dinner? Let's just do a tour. So you walk into an average kitchen.
There are containers with plastic wrap on them. We've already covered that.
There are things that have been cooked with nonstick pans. We've already covered that.
There are deadly spatulas. We've covered that.
Anything else that we are forgetting for a typical Thanksgiving meal that could kill you. Right.
None of this is going to kill you. But I recently went down the rabbit hole of trying to buy a slow cooker and pressure cooker.

Interesting.

And I really wanted to get an Instant Pot.

And then I went online and looked at their disclosures on the website.

And it turns out those can contain PFAS.

I was really surprised by that because the basin of an Instant Pot is just a stainless steel bowl.

But my assumption is there's something in the lid that is in the food contact surface that is also PFAS.

So just basically many, many other kitchen appliances are coated in a nonstick layer of PFAS. I also tried to buy a toaster oven, like for the counter, so I wouldn't have to turn on my gas oven every single time I wanted to bake something.
And a lot of those, the entire interior is just coated in PFAS. Interesting.
So how do you think, so your rule is very much limit plastics to almost no plastics and definitely no PFAS. Yeah.
And how do you know if something has PFAS? Like I wouldn't have guessed about an Instant Pot, which I do have, or about a toaster oven, which I don't have, but I wouldn't have guessed about either of those. They put it on their website.
If you look in like the materials and care section of most of these

things, it'll let you know. Okay.
So maybe now that we have, would you say, is there any way

to say that we haven't ruined people's Thanksgivings? Like, no, we've made them less

stress-free possible. Depends when they listen to this.
Well, it's like so important to remember

stress is also a major health hazard. So I don't want anyone to get super stressed out about this or blow it out of proportion.
You're not going to die because of any of this. But you are just accumulating things you don't need in your body.
Your kitchen is just slightly less stress for you. Like you look around your kitchen and it's just because you're attuned to microplastics, you just don't see them everywhere.
So in fact, for you, it's less stress. Yeah, I walk around all day.
There's so many inputs to my body I can't control, but at least I can control the ones in my kitchen. Right.
Your kitchen is a little sphere of control. I actually really like that idea.
Now, I'm having a Friendsgiving this year, and I am now actually going to drive to my friend's house who does most of the cooking and evacuate the dangerous utensils from his kitchen. That's going to be my plan.
I hope he thanks you and doesn't get really pissed off. It could go either way.
As I fling the spatulas. Are you going to bring him replacements? I guess you're right.
If I throw away all his spatulas before I do that, I have to bring him silicone replacements, for sure. That seems only reasonable.
I will say my, you know, on other Thanksgivings, my two sides of my family have very different ideas about all this. So there is like one home I'd go into where basically everything is, you know, natural products and the other side where everything would be microwaved in plastic.
Wow. So how do you handle that situation?

You just mostly have to live and let live.

It's like also, you know, if I'm their daughter and they're not reading my articles,

there's not much I'm going to do, you know?

Right, right.

I didn't realize that was your actual appearance.

Right. That's funny.

Yeah, I suppose the last thing we should do is give advice to people

who walk into a kitchen and everything has been, you know, baked in the microwave in plastic containers. You just eat that meal and go back to your own kitchen and think about your own choices.
I mean, okay, this is all to say you eat in restaurants all the time. Yes.
Restaurants are using plastic constantly. Yeah.
It's really just like you lower your own dose when you can. Yes.
I think that's what

it comes down to.

It's not about policing

everybody's plastics

and everything you put

in your body.

It's about controlling

what you can

and your own tiny

or big

or however size

your kitchen is,

that is a sphere

you can control

so you might as well

do that

and that's a lovely thing

and everything outside of that,

don't worry about it.

I think so.

I think that's the moral here.

Okay. Excellent.
Thank you, Zoe. Thank you.
Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving.
This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Kevin Townsend. It was edited by Claudina Bade, fact-checked by Will Gordon, and engineered by Rob Smersiak.
Claudina Bade is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.

I'm Hannah Rosen.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Enjoy the turkey.

Enjoy the mashed potatoes.

Enjoy the stuffing.

And enjoy all the plastic you're eating.