If you wanted to, you could easily identify types of food from their takeout container. Clear plastic clamshell? That’s a salad. Flat, square box? You know there’s a pizza in there. White wax paper secured with a rubber band? Get ready to dig into a sub. Black container with a plastic top? That screams sushi or Chinese food. While you’re no doubt happy to get your hands on the food, a new study from the environmental health research and advocacy group Toxic-Free Future suggests that you shouldn’t be too happy if you see a black plastic container. That’s because researchers have found that these containers quite often contain toxic flame retardants. These chemicals — which include harmful compounds like deca-BDE, TBBPA and RDP — are permitted in the black plastic that's used to manufacture electronics, but not items that we handle on a daily basis, and certainly not those that touch our food. Is it safe to eat takeout delivered in black plastic? According to Megan Liu, the lead author on the study, no. “Flame retardants can leach out of kitchen utensils into food, and it’s alarming to think that we could be eating flame retardants,” she says. Researchers found levels of deca-BDE to be up to 1,200 times greater than the limit of 10 ppm, which is outrageous when you consider the fact that people eat off those trays. What should you do with black plastic containers? According to Liu, toss them out — don’t even recycle them.
