Chemosphere, the Elsevier title which in September published an article on “unexpected exposure to toxic flame retardants in household items” such as black plastic cooking utensils, has been removed from Clarivate’s Web of Science index in its December update.

The article, "From e-waste to living space: Flame retardants contaminating household items add to concern about plastic recycling", received heavy international media coverage, questioning whether we should all throw out our black plastic spatulas. The authors corrected their calculations in a December 15, 2024 corrigendum. The exposure was an order of magnitude lower than the safe daily reference dose, not approaching it, as they had initially reported, but "this calculation error does not affect the overall conclusion of the paper", the authors wrote in the notice.

Meanwhile, Clarivate removed Chemosphere from its Web of Science index December 16, 2024 for failing to meet editorial quality criteria. Chemosphere has retracted eight articles this month and published 60 expressions of concern since April.

Source: https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12/18/journal-that-published-viral-study-on-black-plastic-removed-from-major-index/