There are no mobile PFAS chemicals in nonstick cookware. Nonstick coatings are made from PTFE, which is a completely inert polymer that cannot be broken down into mobile components unless it's overheated. The fluorinated chemicals used in the manufacture of the coatings (largely surfactants) are completely removed when the coating is baked on, and they have to be or else the coating would fail.
PTFE is used in medical implants. You can eat it. In no case that I'm aware of have these things resulted in detectable fluorinated compounds in someone's blood stream.
People "overheat" their cookware all the time. Do you know anyone who measures the temp of the surface of their cookware?
Teflon and nonstick coatings kill birds (house pets) when overheated. A nonstick pan in the oven to catch the drippings from your chicken baking at 400 or 425 can kill your parrot quickly. A nonstick wok left unattended for a few minutes during a high-heat stir fry easily reaches 400, enough to kill your cockatiel.
And as another poster has noted, those coatings always start flaking off.
Why buy something that produces fumes enough to kill your house pets and also has planned obsolescence built in when you can get a cast iron pan that's indestructible and will increase your iron intake a bit? It's not hard to develop a great seasoning on it that's essentially non-stick. I use cast iron for almost everything, and enamel for a few remaining applications.
I was maybe (mis)remembering studies that showed the pans had to be heated to a high-temperature relatively fast (in the order of under a second) for the off-gassing to occur, but I couldn't find that yet. I did find some interesting information about the dangers at different temperatures [1] and common cooking temperatures[2]. Without finding that study about quickly heating being necessary, they seem to corroborate your point.
Notice that the reports in your first link of PTFE coatings breaking down at less than 260 deg C are anecdotal. The lowest temperature at which PTFE coatings have been verified to give off breakdown products is 240 deg C. Even then, the only detected product was PTFE sublimate (small particles of PTFE flying off), which can lead to what we call "fume fever" if it's inhaled in large quantities, but reports of this happening in real life are rare, even in factory workers who are exposed at higher levels.
PTFE is chemically stable well past 300 deg C (540 deg F) and many nonstick cookware lines are marketed for these temperatures. For example, I have Calphalon pans labelled for use up to 550 deg F, which are advertised for searing steak. I get them pretty hot, and they show no signs of degradation.
At around 360 deg F (650 deg F), PTFE starts to give off detectable pyrolysis products, which are theoretically able to cause health problems, but even then reports of actual harm are few and far between. This is remarkable given that billions of pieces of nonstick cookware have been in use every day around the world for the past seventy years. Between the end users and the factory workers who make stuff, and all of the accidents and episodes of overheating that occur all the time, if there were going to be significant health effects I think they'd show up by now.
The real problem is the PFAS chemicals that are sprayed on our clothes, upholstery, carpeting and other home furnishings, that the military and civilian airports have dumped in our water supplies. This is a shaping up to be a true environmental catastrophe, and the manufacturers of nonstick coatings have no doubt contributed to this pollution. But the teflon cookware itself is not the slightest threat.
Cast iron pans are wonderful. I inherited one that was purchased originally in 1929. It's used every day or two to cook eggs for breakfast, and as I've found over the years butter is fantastic for keeping the seasoning in great shape. It's more non-stick than teflon, just a little shake is enough to send my eggs sliding to the other side of the pan. All it takes is discipline.
Best part is, this same pan will probably live well beyond 100 years. Possibly 150 or more. How many household items last that long? This is what we've lost with our culture's planned obsolescence, products that last for generations. It my have been expensive back then, but that was the last person in my family to buy this type of cookware. Safe, long lasting products isn't an innovation, it's a very welcomed regression.
I agree, I love vintage cookware. My favorite pans are a bunch of All-Clad LTD's I assembled from Ebay over the years. I use them for omelettes and french toast. Super thick aluminum clad with a stainless cooking surface, made sometime in the 1980s. They're as tough as cast iron, but they heat way more evenly, they're much lighter, and you don't have to worry about hurting the seasoning.
With cast iron, you can easily destroy the seasoning by overheating the pan, or if your mother who doesn't know how to care for cast iron puts it in the dishwasher. I put my All-Clads in the sink and scrub them with a steel tuffy. They're probably the most indestructable tools I own.
i'd have to buy a new stove if i had a cast iron pan
i have a glass top stove.
cast iron has several problems. Learning how to "season" it (which i never figured out how to do when i had a different oven), the fact it's usually expensive and there's no "one size fits all scenarios" type of pan to use and re-use, thus resulting in you have to buy several.
Then there's stainless steel pans but good luck with that - everything sticks to that.
I just want to cook some eggs without having to use some chemical solvent to actually clean the egg remnants off the pan.
I might go with “because they are lazy” for many of the shortcuts we take. We have one well-seasoned cast-iron pan and several not-so-well-seasoned which I’ve been too lazy to properly treat, so for now I spend the extra time scrubbing. I even use soap (!), though only after the dog gets the big stuff off. Teflon pans required too much care, so we never repaced them.
I agree that rice sticks easily to iron pans, so I usually cook rice in inox/stainless saucepans or in ceramic in the pressure cooker.
Eggs we cook in the seasoned iron pan.
We can change our habits so that we don’t do so much harm to life on earth.
I think that you are correct in most cases, people choose nonstick for the easy cleanup afterwards. But that's not what I'm referring to. I have not found a pan, other than PTFE coated, which can fry rice to crispy without using excessive tons of oil. All of the best crispy rice will get stuck to the pan and become inedible.
When you tried the carbon steel pan, was it properly seasoned? They stick like hell before they are well seasoned, but seasoning them gives the carbon steel its non-stick properties. Woks are the ultimate tool for this, as they are carbon steel (so non-stick when seasoned) and their shape minimizes the amount of oil necessary to fry the rice. It is ubiquitous for fried rice across almost all of Asia.
Yeah but they use a lot of oil in those woks, and they get them really hot. Any Chinese street vendor with an open fire and cheap steel wok can do shit I can't dream of doing in my fancy ass American kitchen.
J Kenji Lopez-Alt has a lot of great wok content for American kitchens. In [0], he uses a butane torch to get the smoky wok flavor (wok hei) in a standard kitchen. He also reviews outdoor wok setups for those who want something close to Chinese street vendor-type vibe.
I cook with my carbon steel somewhat often, and it seems to have built up a nice thin black layer that keeps most things from sticking. Cleaning is a breeze, some dish soap and a couple scrubs. None of the black layer comes off.
Rice does not stick at first, but as it gets hot it does, unless I put around 3x the oil I would prefer. I have a gas range with a large burner so it gets very hot.
This is my experience as well. I also use a lot of slowly sauteed garlic, like pretty much every day, and I'm completely reliant on a small nonstick pot to do it without sticking and burning.
Scrambled eggs too, especially the soft-scrambled kind ala Gordon Ramsay's famous short video. They simply wipe out of nonstick pan, and I've never seen this work with any other kind of cookware.
> Do you know anyone who measures the temp of the surface of their cookware?
Yes, I do. I have a cheap IR thermometer with my kitchen utensils, and I use it all the time. I use it every time I roast seeds and spices, because I'm picky that way. I've also used it when I've accidentally left a pan on the burner too long. I'm careful but I screw up now and then. I accidentally heated a stainless pan to nearly 500 deg F once, but 've never gotten a nonstick pan over about 400 deg F.
> Teflon and nonstick coatings kill birds (house pets) when overheated. A nonstick pan in the oven to catch the drippings from your chicken baking at 400 or 425 can kill your parrot quickly. A nonstick wok left unattended for a few minutes during a high-heat stir fry easily reaches 400, enough to kill your cockatiel.
Stories of such low temperatures killing birds are anecdotal. The lowest temperature that has lead to bird deaths in a controlled laboratory setting is 280 deg C, which is about 580 deg F. [1]
Keep in mind that birds are easily killed by common cooking smoke and fumes, as well as natural gas. The problem with these anecdotes is that it's likely there were other fumes involved, and there's no way to know what actually kills a bird oustide a controlled lab setting.
> And as another poster has noted, those coatings always start flaking off.
As I noted in another comment, it's not hard to keep a nonstick pan indefinitely. I have a lot of ten and fifteen year old nonstick pans that are as good as the day I bought them. My daily drivers are about five years old now, good as new. I'm careful not to overheat them and I never use metal utensils in them. Following those two rules, even my kids were able to use them without damaging them.
> Why buy something that produces fumes enough to kill your house pets and also has planned obsolescence built in when you can get a cast iron pan that's indestructible and will increase your iron intake a bit?
If you overheat that cast iron pan, or if you burn food in it, it will kill birds just as easily as a nonstick pan. Also note, there is vastly more evidence of harm from excess iron consumption than there is of harm from overheated PTFE coatings.
That said, I like steel and iron pans. I regularly use enameled steel pans for toasting spices, and I cook crepes and pancakes on steel pans. I don't use cast iron for much because it's heavy as shit and its heat distribution sucks.
I've actually had good luck with seasoned bare aluminum pans. This is more common in some restaurant kitchens, but not so much in home kitchens. Aluminum seasons just as well as iron, and the heat distribution is way way better. But for some reason "cast aluminum" doesn't have quite the same old-timey panache as does cast iron.
+1 for measuring temp. I recommend everyone to buy $10 IR thermometer from AliExpress, despite it's not absolutely accurate, it's very helpful to measure and see changing temperature.
There aren't any long term studies comparing people who cook with non-stick vs stainless or cast iron, so we can only guess about long term and population level effects based on limited information.
I personally would not take the risk given the benefit is just a pan that things stick to less. Medical uses are more justifiable.
No, we have lots of long term information about nonstick cookware. People forget we've been using teflon cookware since the 1950's. There have been billions of pieces of nonstick cookware in use every day around the world for decades.
The problem is that because there are so many free PFAS chemicals around us from other sources, studying the possible effects of cookware is a bit like studying whether it contains evil spirits. You won't be able to come up with a falsifiable hypothesis, because our PFC exposure via other routes is so high.
Another reason long term studies aren't viable is that there is no plausible mechanism of action of toxicity from nonstick cookware under the sort of use that it almost always gets. Unless it's badly overheated, PTFE is completely stable in inert.
Think about this logically: if you handle a water resistant jacket and then eat a sandwich, you'll ingest measureable quanities of PFAS. Every time kids or babies play on a stain-resistant carpetting and furniture, then ingest far greater quantities from their hands and toys.
In contrast, any PFAS that remains in nonstick cookware would be on the edge of detectability. PFAS surfactants are used in the manufacture of the coatings, but it boils off when the coating is baked on, and as far as I know, no detectable PFAS has ever been verified in finished cookware. Even when agressively overheated, nonstick cookware doesn't emit PFAS. It sublimates micro-size PTFA particles, which can lead to what we call "fume fever" but reports of this actually happening are rare, even in factory workers who are exposed at much higher levels than a home cook is.
So put these two things together: you are likely ingesting millions of times more PFAS from your clothes, carpets, and furniture than you ever could from nonstick cookware.
Worrying about nonstick cookware is sort of like a lifeguard who works in the sun all day, but obsessively blacks out the windows in his home because he's worried about UV radiation getting in his house. It makes no sense.
> No, we have lots of long term information about nonstick cookware. People forget we've been using nonstick cookware since the 1950's.
That’s not a study.
> You won't be able to come up with a falsifiable hypothesis, because our PFC exposure via other routes is so high.
We’re so poisoned by these chemicals it’s impossible to run a study to figure out if one possible source of them specifically is measurably poisoning us. Maybe we should consider banning them, or just avoiding them in general.
> PFAS surfactants are used in the manufacture of the coatings, but it boils off when the coating is baked
See sibling comments.
> if you handle a water resistant jacket and then eat a sandwich, you'll ingest measureable quanities of PFAS
I try to avoid synthetic fabrics when I can, so in my case it’s not like your lifeguard scenario.
I also think the government should step in to limit the use of plastics generally.
> We’re so poisoned by these chemicals it’s impossible to run a study to figure out if one possible source of them specifically is measurably poisoning us.
Sort of. My point is that teflon cookware is not a plausible source of PFAS, because there is no detectable PFAS in finished cookware. Further, because there have been billions of pieces of nonstick cookware in use around the world for decades, if there were negative health effects we would probably notice them by now. But there aren't.
Contrast this to the lead that has been widely used in glass and ceramic cookware and dishes over the same period of time. Manufacturers claimed that lead bearing glazes were perfectly safe. This is false, but we don't need any "studies" to tell us that. Rather we've plainly seen tangible health effects from the use of these items in many medical reports over the years, and we can easily test and verify the presence of lead that is leached into foods that are cooked and served in them.
This is not the case with teflon cookware. There is no detectable PFAS in nonstick cookware, nor are there verifiable reports of health effects from its use, in spite of the millions or billions of such uses happening every day over decades.
> See sibling comments.
Which ones? The ones where I addressed the poorly substantiated risks of overheating?
> I try to avoid synthetic fabrics when I can, so in my case it’s not like your lifeguard scenario.
I guarantee you're not able to avoid PFAS-treated upholstery, carpeting, and other home furnishings. And depending on where you live, chances are good that you ingest significant amounts of PFAS in your drinking water. If you've ever eaten fast food, the wrapper it came in was probably coated in PFAS. Due to these and other sources, I guarantee you have measurable levels of PFAS in your blood and tissues.
So by all means, avoid nonstick cookware if you want. It won't hurt, and it may have value just because it makes you feel better. That's legit. But in terms of actual harm reduction it is very much like the theoretical lifeguard blacking out his windows.
> Further, because there have been billions of pieces of nonstick cookware in use around the world for decades, if there were negative health effects we would probably notice them by now.
Dropping testosterone levels and sperm counts, increasing levels of obesity. I think we're seeing the health effects, although as mentioned it is hard to pick apart exactly what is having what impact. Our lives are flooded with plastic, I suppose non-stick cookware is kind of like a drop in the bucket.
> This is not the case with teflon cookware. There is no detectable PFAS in nonstick cookware, nor are there verifiable reports of health effects from its use, in spite of the millions or billions of such uses happening every day over decades.
I would need a lot of evidence to be convinced there's not a risk. I think we'll look back on plastics a similar way to how we look back on our naivety about things like cigarettes, lead, asbestos, etc.
> I guarantee you're not able to avoid PFAS-treated upholstery, carpeting, and other home furnishings. And depending on where you live, chances are good that you ingest significant amounts of PFAS in your drinking water. If you've ever eaten fast food, the wrapper it came in was probably coated in PFAS. Due to these and other sources, I guarantee you have measurable levels of PFAS in your blood and tissues.
I don't dispute this. I just try to avoid plastics when it's practical. As mentioned I would like to have regulations passed to reduce sources. I would not like to give up and say "well alright I'm being so poisoned already, might as well risk having a bit more by using non-stick pans".
I also don't want to support the manufacturing of these chemicals generally. Putting aside the end consumer, the manufacturing seems very likely to have been harmful to people, and chemicals from the manufacturing could also end up spreading in the environment.
Non-stick pans may not be the absolute worst thing to come out of the plastics industry, but getting rid of them still seems like a step in the right direction.
With every non-stick pan I've ever owned, the coating eventually starts flaking off. Usually after less than 1 year of use. I'm pretty sure I must have ingested plenty of these coatings over the years...
I have many pieces of well-used nonstick cookware well over a decade old, which are in pretty much the same condition as when I bought them. This includes cheap IKEA pans that my kids used. Some of them get used literally every day. We don't overheat them, and don't use metal utensils in them, and there's no reason they can't last forever.
Regardless, you can eat the entire coating off of your pan, and there will be no detectable fluorinated compounds in your blood. PTFE is completely inert and indigestible. It is widely used in medical implants inside people's bodies, with no detectable leaching of any chemicals.
Hmm, sounds like you've got lucky with your pans - everyone I've ever mentioned this too has had the same problem with non-stick pans! Lifetime of 6-12 months tops :/
I never did use metal utensils with them; it might be I overheated some, but certainly not all, and a pan isn't much use if you can't get it hot!
I don't think I'm lucky, but there is definitely a cost. The cost is that I'm a fucking asshole about my nonstick pots and pans. I keep my stash separate from the rest of the family, I get grumpy if I catch anyone using it, and god forbid anyone scratches my shit.
I buy separate stuff for my kids, and my wife has her own favorite pan.
Of course there's no need to be an asshole like me. But I think it's eminently doable for everyone. I do believe keeping the temperature down is key to longevity, especially for cheaper cookware with simpler two-layer nonstick coating systems. I have a lot of these too, and I just avoid going over 300 deg F or so. No problems so far.
PTFE burns at high but commonly achieved cooking temperatures, the result is a fine particulate in the air. You have to be careful (and many aren’t) to only use nonstick for low to medium temperature cooking.
The idea that PTFE doesn't break down except at very high temperatures is not true.
Breakdown begins to occur at either 200 or 260 degrees Celsius (depending on what data you're looking at). These temperatures are well within the realm of temperatures that even a home chef might encounter.
> Breakdown begins to occur at either 200 or 260 degrees Celsius (depending on what data you're looking at).
This isn't good data. The stories of PTFE coatings breaking down at less than 260 deg C are anecdotal. The most well known one comes from someone who swears their chickens were killed by coated light bulbs in a coop.
The lowest temperature that has lead to bird deaths in a controlled laboratory setting is 280 deg C, which is about 580 deg F. [1] This is way freaking hot, and likely only to be reached by accident.
Even in the case of accidental overheating of non-stick cookware, there have been only a few verifiable cases of injury, and certainly no fatalities. Most cases of polymer fume fever have been gleened from among workers in factories, which is remarkable considering that billions of pieces of nonstick cookware have been in use every day around the world for the past seventy years.
Also note that cooking fumes from food are themselves toxic, and kill birds and lead to long term respiratory issues in humans much more easily than PTFE coatings.
> The lowest temperature that has lead to bird deaths in a controlled laboratory setting is 280 deg C
"Did any birds die?" is an approach to this problem that I would expect from an undeveloped nation a hundred years ago. It is both excruciatingly short-term in focus and so imprecise that the results are useless for anyone who is not himself a rat or a canary.
Your data answers the question, "To what temperature must we heat PTFE in order to kill small animals?"
It does not answer the question, "What are the long-term effects on humans of short excursions outside of normal cooking temperatures?"
> "Did any birds die?" is an approach to this problem that I would expect from an undeveloped nation a hundred years ago. It is both excruciatingly short-term in focus and so imprecise that the results are useless for anyone who is not himself a rat or a canary.
I sort of agree, but birds do make a convenient study subject because they are exquisitely sensitive, much more so than humans.
The lowest temperature at which PTFE coatings have been seen to evolve breakdown products (that I know of) is 240 deg C. Even then, the only detected product was micro-size PTFE sublimate, which can lead to what we call "fume fever", but reports of this actually happening are rare, even in factory workers who are exposed at much higher levels.
The temperatures at which PTFE pyrolysis really starts to give off nasty shit are way higher [1], but even then, evidence of physiological harm is sketchy. Anecdotally, I know a few people, including my father, who have left a nonstick pan on the stove, got distracted, and burned the coating right the fuck off. Aside from the smell, no ill effects were observed. This isn't scientific at all, but if burning PTFE is that toxic, one might have expected some effects.
> It does not answer the question, "What are the long-term effects on humans of short excursions outside of normal cooking temperatures?"
This is true, but undertaking such a study would be both impossible and pointless, because we are exposed to millions or billions of times more fluorinated compounds from clothing, furniture, and carepeting, than we could evey hope to get from nonstick cookware, even if you overheat it regularly.
Keep in mind that billions of pieces of nonstick cookware have been in use every day around the world for the past seventy years. And all time, factory workers have been exposed to the manufacturing process. That's plenty of time for problems to have been observed on some level, but they just haven't. The problems we're seeing come from the billion-fold higher levels of PFC we get from other sources.
To repeat an analogy from an earlier comment, worrying about nonstick cookware is sort of like a lifeguard who works in the sun all day, but obsessively blacks out the windows in his home because he's worried about UV radiation getting in his house. It makes no sense.
1 - https://sci-hub.st/10.1289/ehp.7511197 - Waritz, R. S. (1975). An industrial approach to evaluation of pyrolysis and combustion hazards. Environmental Health Perspectives
The last time I needed an x-ray for a broken bone, I asked the x-ray tech for a lead vest to protect my torso and groin area.
He told me that it was pointless because I would be exposed to more background radiation throughout the course of my normal life. He did not understand that ionizing radiation damage is cumulative and that there is no safe limit for exposure. Annoyed with my request, he gave me the vest anyway.
Is there a safe limit for exposure to PFAs? I would readily concede that the risk to an individual is probably negligible, but like in the case of x-rays, population-level risks probably do exist for even the smallest exposure.
That said, I would also support eliminating all sources of PFAs, just like we tried to do with CFCs and asbestos.
You were right to ask for a shield. I would do the same thing, and I'd be a little pissed that I had to ask.
However there's a big difference, in that the x-ray you got actually delivers a substantial amount of ionizing radiation-- up to one full percent of the average annual background dose. There is no evidence that even a lot of normal x-ray scans have any effect on health, but at least it's a physical possibility.
In contrast, the level of chemical hazard from nonstick cookware is a billionth or trillionth (or even smaller) than what's in the carpets we all grew up playing on, or the clothes we wear and furniture we sit on every day.
To use another analogy, worrying about nonstick cookware is like worrying about the ionizing radiation coming from a banana that's sitting uneaten across the room from you.
I agree about absestos, and I fee the same about lead as well. Those are nasty poisons that, contrary to popular lore, cannot be used and applied safely such that they won't eventually get loose and become a health hazard. I've been thinking about asbestos this week because I've been replacing ceiling light fixtures in my house, and it's impossible to do without causing the asbstos-filled popcorn texture to rain down like snow. It's fucking unbelievable what previous generations afflicted us with.
EDIT:
I feel compelled to repeat that common cooking fumes and smoke are known toxins and carcinogens. It makes no sense to be more concerned about tiny amounts of aerosolized PTFE than the far greater amounts of cooking smoke and fumes that will inevitably be emitted by your food at the same temperatures.
Contrary responses aside, these three actions seem healthy. I’ll add that I’d like to see regulation towards cleaner air, water, and land, so that avoidance/mitigation is less necessary.
1. Open the windows as often as weather allows.
2. Don't use nonstick pans unless they're cast iron or some kind of fired enamel.
3. Use a water purifier.