Should You Toss Your Plastic Kitchen Tools for Health Reasons? Here’s the Scoop

It’s a plastic world out there.

About 460 million metric tons of the material are made each year, according to the United Nations, and some scientists are growing increasingly worried that microplastics that find their way into our bodies could be harming our health.

One way they get in? Food. And not only through food itself — though they are there — but also in the sundry tools and other items we use to prepare and store what we eat on a daily basis.

Home cooks chop into plastic cutting boards, heat up plastic containers, sauté with plastic cooking utensils, encase ingredients in plastic wrap and toss plastic detergent pods in the dishwasher — all of which are possible vectors for microplastics exposure.