The plastic in the chicken matched the board

What they found

In a 2022 study, shop staff in the UAE and Kuwait cut chicken and fish on plastic boards, just as they would for any customer. The lab did no cutting of its own. It only looked for plastic in the meat, and the particles it found carried a giveaway: each set was the same colour as the board that portion had been cut on.

White boards left white or colourless particles, red boards red, yellow yellow, green green and blue blue, sample after sample. An infrared scan (FTIR, which identifies a material by the light it absorbs) showed they were polyethylene, the same plastic as the boards. Counted under a microscope, they averaged about a tenth of a millimetre. The team also had one portion cut on a bamboo board and one put through a meat grinder instead of a knife. Neither showed any microplastic, though each was a single sample.

Evidence: Emerging

Why it matters

Plastic from the board ends up in food. In shops, 12 of 13 chicken and fish samples carried polyethylene particles: up to 1.19 per gram of chicken and 2.6 per gram of fish. Lab tests suggest wear adds to it. In one, plastic in food paste rose about 2.3- to 3.5-fold over 12 rounds of heavy chopping on new boards. In another, release rose over nine back-to-back sessions on all seven boards.

The swap

Replace the board you chop on most

Do your everyday chopping on a solid wood or bamboo board. When a plastic board is deeply scored, replace it: in two lab studies, boards shed more plastic as they wore. A smooth plastic board need not go in the bin at once, though new boards also shed. Wood and bamboo shed wood particles and wear out too. Keep your usual food-safety habits, including a separate board for raw meat if you use one.

Cost: ~$15-30 · Swap rating: Likely

What we don't know yet

No study has counted plastic in food chopped at home. EFSA, Europe's food safety agency, calls the shop result a possible worst case (meat diced small) but says knives clearly released board particles. Shop samples were few, varied widely and were reported inconsistently. Lab tests used heavy chopping or bare boards, weighed or counted particles without identifying each, and EFSA reviewed neither.