I try very hard not to be argumentative but as a chemist there are a number of posts I see that I really feel the need to chime in on. This is both inflammatory and inaccurate.
Statement 1: Scratching a nonstick pan will fill your blood with microplastics. True, I guess, but this is mostly just abusing buzzwords to scare you. Do you know why we use Teflon for things? It doesnât react with things, pretty much anything really. I can understand why people are opposed to the idea of âunnaturalâ things in your body but teflon literally will not hurt you at all. Straight up you could inject a teflon slurry directly into my veins and I Would Not Careâ˘ď¸. If you know anything about carbon-fluorine bonding you know Teflon canât do jack to your body.
Statement 2: Teflon degrades at high heat. Again, technically true, but that process doesnât begin until about 260 °C and doesnât pose a significant hazard until above 340 °C. Is it possible to achieve these heats in your average kitchen? Yes, but you frankly have to be pretty stupid to do that to a pan. Itâs extremely unlikely in sensible, everyday usage.
Statement 3: Everyone has teflon in their blood. Not true. Factually incorrect. You may have heard of PFAS (per/poly fluorinated alkyl substances). One of the most common is PFOA. This is technically in your blood. BUT itâs not teflon and it doesnât come from teflon. Teflon is not in your blood, PFOA is, but they are different things. It used to be used in teflon manufacturing and it was dumped in rivers and lakes (which is how it got in our blood and which I freely admit is bad and evil) but itâs been phased out and you should leave my nonstick cookware out of this.
Statement 4: Teflon in your blood is âvery bad for youâ. First of all, see statements 1 and 3 wrt whether there is actually teflon in your blood and whether thatâs dangerous. If youâre talking about PFOA, well, itâs still all fluorine and carbon so Iâm personally skeptical about its bioactivity. Regardless of my opinions, the international society of cancer research lists it as class 2A (possible human carcinogen) which sounds scary if youâre not familiar but frankly includes basically everything. Other items in that category include, Cobalt metal (often used in hip replacements), cisplatin (the worlds most common anti-cancer drug), I kid you not ânight shift workâ, red meat, and lastly âvery hot beveragesâ. My point being that itâs really in the âwho the fuck caresâ regime of danger.
I understand that people think PFAS sounds scary. The term âforever chemicalâ strikes me as having been invented for the specific purpose of scaring people. But please understand that any chemical that lasts forever is like that because itâs very very stable and isnât likely to interact with its surroundings or particularly your body. All this is not to say we should be letting chemical manufacturers off the hook for wonton pollution or the many real ways they are actively poisoning us, but I think thereâs no sense scaring people about a complete non-issue and trying to convince them to spend the rest of their lives burning their eggs on stainless steel pans.
