A highly publicized study on the presence of flame retardants in black plastic household products contained a calculator error, the authors announced. | Jared Paben/Resource Recycling
Last year, a study suggested that household products containing plastic possibly recovered from electronics had high levels of flame retardants – but the authors issued a correction to the work after finding a miscalculation.
The original study from Seattle-based environmental advocacy and research group Toxic-Free Future and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam public university raised public concern about the safety of items like black plastic kitchen utensils, with some mainstream media headlines urging consumers to throw out such implements.
The error came when calculating a brominated flame retardant reference dose for an average adult. The authors estimated the reference dose – or a baseline “safe” threshold – of BDE-209 to be 42,000 nanograms per day instead of the correct value of 420,000 nanograms per day.
Therefore, instead of approaching the upper limits of what the U.S. EPA considers a “safe” threshold, the new calculation puts bromine levels found in the tested plastics “an order of magnitude lower.”
In a correction added to the original report, the authors wrote that they “regret that our original manuscript was printed with an error” but added that the “calculation error does not affect the overall conclusion of the paper.”
The study, “From e-waste to living space: Flame retardants contaminating household items add to concern about plastic recycling,” appeared in the scientific journal Chemosphere.
At the time of its publication, some e-plastics processors expressed concerns about the dots the study connected.
Pablo Leon, CEO of Spain-headquartered e-plastics recycling firm Sostenplas, said his company has “never sold recycled e-plastics for food contact applications or toys, and to our knowledge, this isn’t a common practice in the legitimate e-plastics recycling industry in Europe.”
Leon added that the presence of flame retardants in black plastics is concerning, but that those chemicals did not necessarily come from e-plastics. Many of the same chemicals are used in automotive parts, construction products and for other industrial uses.
“Linking their presence specifically to e-waste recycling might be oversimplifying the issue and, honestly, quite misleading,” Leon said.