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Nonstick Cookware Industry Furious at Suggestion They Should Stop Causing Cancer (futurism.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
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[–] 2 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

Cookware isn’t a major vector for pfoa anymore

By 2007, studies showed that the concentration of PFOA in a sample of the U.S. population's bloodstream (collected in 2003-2004) was 25 percent less than that in samples collected in 1999-2000

Normal cooking appliances can be hot enough both on stovetop (such as with a dry pan left on a burner) and in the broiler to damage non-stick coatings

Teflon and other coatings can begin to break down when the temperature reaches 500˚F

Yeah I guess that converts to 260°C but the point is that ovens do get this hot

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (3 children)

    Was the concentration in cookware a higher source of expose some time before? I know the situation with PFOA was worse before, but afaik it was even back then due to other concerns than the cookware.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I believe it was still mostly on the manufacturing process. Except that using pfoa in manufacturing not only caused non-degradable pollution at the source but meant there could be contamination of the cookware

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Manufacturing for sure was a huge contributor but that's manufacturing of products with pfoa or derivatives in general, since those were widely used. Which is still bad, but more directly relevant here, cookware hasn't itself been much of an issue to people's health afaik.

    It's one of those things where it's pretty understandable to be overly cautious and better safe than sorry, but I feel like nonstick cookware took the brunt of the worry when it wasn't the real concern, rather the plants producing chemicals and their use in manufacturing and other products.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    For me, the big deal is the “forever” nature. These chemicals will continue accumulating in the environment, in the food chain, in people’s bodies, essentially forever. They don’t biodegrade and they’re getting ubiquitous enough that you couldn’t clean up the contamination if you had to.

    I also worry that it’s not a chemical, but a large class of chemicals. There are many variations and they have not been individually evaluated.

    And there have been studies showing harm in animals, including harm when the accumulation in a creature gets large enough to physically interfere with things.

    Those all add up to enough risk that we really need to cut back

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