When you go home and start cooking dinner for your family, you may want to use a wooden cutting board to cut those veggies rather than a plastic one.
A new study shows those types of cutting boards are likely to shed microplastics that could be harmful to your health.
A recent study from South Dakota State University published with the American Chemical Society showed that on the upper end of the scale plastic boards shed the equivalent to the mass of 10 red solo cup’s worth of microplastics over the course of a year.
For the study, called “Cutting Boards: An Overlooked Source of Microplastics in Human Food,” researchers chopped carrots on both polyethylene and polypropylene boards. They then washed the vegetables and used tiny filters to determine how many plastic particles were stuck to the food.
Researchers found that per chop, you are getting anywhere from one to a dozen microplastic particles stuck to those otherwise healthy veggies. Not nearly as tasty as that garlic or onion going into your soup.
If you use that board daily, researchers estimate that you could ingest around 7 grams to 50 grams of microplastics from a polyethylene chopping board and around 50 grams of microplastics from a polypropylene chopping board. The average red solo cup is around 5 grams.
Most studies have not conclusively determined the health affects of microplastics because of limited data on long term studies. Some health experts believe they can disrupt your endocrine system and cause inflammation.
