In addition, chopping creates deep grooves within the plastic the place micro organism can linger, which makes used plastic chopping boards very tough to totally disinfect in a dishwasher. You actually have to be utilizing a brush to get into these grooves. So should you do use a plastic board, decide to present it scrub your self as an alternative of inserting it within the dishwasher.
In one older research5 out of the University of Wisconsin, researchers positioned a number of micro organism, together with E. coli and Salmonella, on each used and new wooden and plastic chopping boards. The wooden chopping boards constantly outperformed the plastic boards when it comes to bacterial security. Moral of the story? Wooden chopping boards could grow to be extra sanitary than plastic, and show higher on your hormonal well being (offered they don’t use plastic-containing glues to stay the wood items collectively).
Some plastic chopping boards are additionally coated with antibacterial substances to forestall micro organism from rising, however this solely trades in micro organism progress for different chemical substances, usually endocrine disrupters. A quite common antibacterial chemical used for such functions is Microban, which accommodates the antibacterial ingredient triclosan6. The FDA doesn’t acknowledge triclosan as protected attributable to its hormone-disrupting properties6. While triclosan has been phased out of handwash and sanitizers7, it nonetheless lurks in different on a regular basis merchandise—together with chopping boards.
Some folks additionally use robust chemical substances, reminiscent of bleach diluted with water, to wash plastic chopping boards. That creates the fearful risk of contaminating your meals with such chemical substances. If you’ve ever put tomato or turmeric-rich meals right into a plastic container, you’ll see that it turns pink or yellow. This is as a result of the components have seeped into the matrix of the plastic. Harsh cleansing brokers may be seeping into your board, probably contaminating the meals you narrow on it.