Your plastic slicing board is releasing microplastics that may get into meals. Does that imply you must ditch it?

The cleanliness of slicing boards is a long-debated meals security subject, provided that each wooden and plastic — the most typical slicing board supplies — can simply harbor micro organism. New analysis exhibits that utilizing plastic slicing boards can launch microplastics. So how involved do you have to be?

A 2023 research printed within the journal Environmental Science & Technology discovered that utilizing a plastic slicing board can create between 1,536 and seven,680 small flecks of plastic, which might get onto your knife and into your meals. Microplastics are simply ingested as a result of their microscopic measurement, and analysis exhibits that they’ll accumulate throughout the human physique.

Understandably, there’s concern over the long-term well being results of this, particularly given the truth that “microplastics are, indeed, everywhere,” Mark Jones, a retired industrial chemist and chemistry marketing consultant with experience in microplastics, tells Yahoo Life. In addition to slicing boards, microplastics shed from single-use water bottles, clothes, tires, paint and extra, he provides.

How dangerous are plastic slicing boards?

Plastic slicing boards are simply one of many some ways persons are uncovered to microplastics. We all have already got 1000’s of microplastic particles inside us. However, there is no such thing as a conclusive proof but about their long-term well being results in people. “We’re just starting to look into the human health impacts,” explains Tasha Stoiber, a senior scientist on the Environmental Working Group.

However, there’s loads of analysis to show that microplastics are dangerous to the atmosphere and animals. Animal research, for instance, have linked microplastics to potential oxidative stress (harm on the mobile stage), reproductive hurt and endocrine disruption (interfering with the physique’s hormones).

The query is, how involved ought to people be about utilizing plastic slicing boards when they’re, as Jones says, “but a minor part of all the microplastics that your body is inundated with on a daily basis”? To put this in perspective, authors of a current paper printed in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences studied three standard bottled water manufacturers and located {that a} liter of water, on common, accommodates round 240,000 nanoplastic particles, way more plastic than that mentioned within the slicing board research.

Should you throw out your plastic slicing boards?

Experts are a bit blended on this. “I’m not throwing my plastic cutting boards away based on this, because I don’t see that there is currently any hard evidence of health impacts coming from whatever plastics we are consuming,” says Jones. However, he provides, “The absence of data, right now, of any health impact does not mean there will not be a health impact in the future.”

Stoiber, who doesn’t use plastic slicing boards, errs on the facet of warning: “We’re just beginning to understand the magnitude of how this much plastic might be getting into our bodies,” she says. “I don’t think we have the full picture yet, but the findings are concerning.”

Aside from microplastics, there are different causes to rethink your slicing board’s materials. “Plastics can also be a vehicle for a number of different chemicals that you don’t want to be exposed to — phthalates, for example,” says Stoiber. Phthalates are a gaggle of chemical substances used to make plastics extra sturdy, however they might be dangerous. Plastic slicing boards are additionally extra prone to harbor micro organism and are tougher to disinfect than, say, wooden ones, Stoiber explains. Their comfortable floor simply develops grooves from slicing, which primarily change into “impossible to wash,” she provides. “That’s, personally, why I would never use a plastic cutting board.”

Plastic slicing boards are additionally typically much less sturdy and extra disposable than different slicing boards, which makes them a fairly unsustainable decide, Stoiber provides.

What are you able to do about it?

“Anything that you can do to reduce your plastic exposure is a good thing,” says Stoiber. “And what you use in the kitchen is a good place to start.”

She recommends choosing a wooden — a tough wooden like maple or bamboo are good choices — and even steel slicing board as an alternative, each of that are extra sturdy, and due to this fact, much less prone to groove and harbor micro organism. Whatever you select, simply make sure to wash with dish cleaning soap and heat water after each use. (It’s additionally a good suggestion to sometimes sanitize slicing boards, corresponding to with a diluted bleach resolution — 1 gallon of water blended with 1 tablespoon of bleach — adopted by rinsing with water.)

Jones says that the best slicing board, although, is one that does not exist but: completely non-porous, antibacterial and naturally sourced. “In a world that perfectly makes sense, you would use a glass cutting board with a steel knife,” he says. “The steel is not hard enough to abrade the glass cutting board, so you would never create scratches.”

If you’re anxious about your ingestion of microplastics, you’ll be able to ditch the plastic slicing board, but additionally think about your different day by day — and sure extra impactful — plastic makes use of. Rather than utilizing disposable plastic water bottles for instance, a chrome steel water bottle with filtered water, Stoiber says, is “a great way to cut down on the ingestion of microplastics.” She additionally recommends not utilizing or reheating plastic storage containers or takeout containers, as warmth promotes the discharge of extra microplastics.

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