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Please stop the ride, I want off
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this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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What the fuck is Teflon?
Also known as PTFE, it is a plastic substance that has an insanely low coefficient of friction and is thus incredibly fucking useful for so many things. And much like the last weirdly good at doing everything substance (asbestos) it turns out it really should not have been put in everything, but its probably not quite as bad as asbestos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene
And Teflon really isn't the issue, it's the binding PFAS or PFOA that causes health issues.
PFOA was the surfactant that was used to keep Teflon in an emulsion during coating processes. It was replaced in the 2000s with an alternate product branded GenX that was supposed to be safer, but in actuality ended up being more toxic than PFOA.
In either case, the main exposure risk is to those surfactant chemicals, typically due to groundwater contamination near a plant or via occupational exposure. Once in a finished coating, Teflon itself is essentially inert unless you heat it up several hundred degrees, so existing nonstick pans and other finished products don't pose too much risk.
Thank goodness it isn't used in cookware! 😬
Having kept birds in the past, I don't believe it's truly safe to cook with. People using it as directed have had their birds drop dead from it because their lungs are so much more sensitive. If it's enough to affect them it's very possible it's just subacute in humans in the short term but causes health problems long term.
Also, it's plastic. You can't convince me it's great to cook on top of that. Plus it doesn't last the way stainless steel or cast iron does, you're basically buying it to throw away in a couple of years.
Don't get me wrong, I kept birds as well and I'm aware of the dangers of overheating Teflon pans around them -- the same issues arise with 3D printers with PTFE-lined heatbreaks, by the by -- but with some caution, in common cooking use those pans aren't going to see the sorts of temperatures required to start decomposing the coating. Once it starts to wear out, certainly I'd say dump the Teflon cookware and get some stainless and/or cast-iron replacements, but a knee-jerk overreaction to throw out a sound pan is only going to make the plastic waste problem worse in the short term. Plastic the stuff may be, but (again, unless heated quite a bit) it's one of the least chemically-reactive substances we know of.
You putting in a pizza oven? Because you shouldn't.
Pans on a stove can easily reach sufficient temperatures to break down the Teflon, especially when empty or left unattended. You don’t have to have a ridiculously high temperature oven for it to be a risk. If you’ve ever had coconut oil or olive oil smoke in your pan then you’ve probably exceeded the recommended use temperature for Teflon.
Scroll back up to my earlier comment.
I said "typical use cases". Your examples aren't typical.
Also, why the fuck you cooking oil that hot in a nonstick?
Typical use case includes people forgetting a pan for a few minutes because these are used by human beings, not robots, or using it to stir fry (which requires high heat) because they coat fucking woks in that shit now.
Typical use cases doesn't mean forgetting a and leaving it to burn up and get fume fever. Because that has actually happened, but extremely rarely.
Even when you use them for their intended use, such as stir frying in a wok, they can reach temperatures that are normal for cooking but unsafe for Teflon. And it is extremely easy to forget a pan on the stove for a minute, and that should factor into whether or not a product is considered safe.
For example, pressure cookers have to have fail safe mechanisms, even though you could just as easily say anyone using it should just use it properly and they wouldn’t explode.
Slippery shit
Polymer bonded to frying pans to make them non-stick.