That study of black plastic kitchenware became overwhelming because of a simple math error.

If TikTok has had you ditching your black plastic kitchen utensils, rest assured that those tools were not as bad as they seemed.

A study that went viral in November — as any study can go viral — suggested that black plastic kitchen utensils were present. spend more toxins in our food thanks to the flame retardant carried in the recycled gas that helped make plastic tools. However, there was a major problem in the study that came down to simple statistics, such as Canada The National Post report.

In short, the study aimed to measure the average amount of flame retardants that could be released from black plastic spatulas during cooking. The study found that number was 34,700 nanograms per day, which, the study noted, was close to the EPA limit of 42,000. That, in part, caused a huge panic across TikTok and in the big books about black plastic cooking. the dishes were slowly poisoning everyone. I can’t tell you how many posts I’ve seen online of people throwing away their dishes or telling others to do so.

However, the study made a simple statistical error, which may have made the findings sound worse than they should have been. I The National Post reported that the research calculates that the EPA limit by multiplying 7,000 – the number of nanograms of toxin per kilogram of body weight – by 60, to get the human limit of 60-kilogram (132 pounds) per day. That’s how they got 42,000. But 60 times 7,000 is, in fact, 420,000 – which means the exposure is actually less than one-tenth of the limit.

Now that doesn’t mean people want any of these toxins in their food. Zero would be a good number. But as YouTube’s favorite science broadcaster, Hank Green, pointed out to Bluesky “that piece of paper in the black plastic blew up a little because of a simple math error.”

The legal organization that conducted the study, Toxic-Free Future, said that although there was a mistake, it does not affect all the findings.

“As noted in the published correction, this comparison was not the primary focus of the study and the findings, conclusions, and recommendations are not affected by this correction,” the group wrote in Bluesky.

So you might want to watch out for black plastic – but all those articles and TikToks might be a little misleading.