YSK the finished PFAS in the end product like non stick pans is perfectly safe. The long molecules with strong carbon-fluoride bonds don’t interact with biology at all. You can cut it up into tiny pieces and eat it, it will just come out the other end. Even if you were to implant it inside your body, it would do nothing. Actually materials like PTFE are often used for medical implants, specially because they are so inert and safe.
So why is PFAS bad? Because in the production of the long molecules, short molecules are required. Those molecules are a waste product after use and are usually dumped. In the past they were dumped in huge amounts. However these short molecules are very dangerous, they do interact with biology and cause all sorts of issues including cancer. The people at Dupont figured this out very quickly, but chose not to report on it. It took a long time for the issue to become public. With their waste material giving the company a bad name, they said they invented a new short molecule to use, which was much safer. Except it wasn’t safer at all, they knew it wasn’t and they again didn’t make that info public. After they were found out a second time, the governments classified all such chemicals under the PFAS family and regulated all of them.
Unfortunately our world runs on stuff like PTFE, so it’s still widely used, without any substitutes available. And we keep on dumping those dangerous short molecules into our environment. And because they don’t decay over time (hence the nickname forever chemicals) they are here to stay. We’ve also found out even a little bit of it can be dangerous and we’ve dumped a lot of it into our water supply. So that’s why PFAS is bad.
TLDR: If you own anything with PTFE or similar materials like non stick pans and cutting boards, don’t worry they are totally safe. Since the damage is already done, keep using them as much as possible, so the damage wasn’t for nothing.
If you are going to buy new stuff: avoid any products with PFAS as a waste product. Governments are working on regulation to make this clearly visible when purchasing a product. The less we buy, the less we produce, the less we pollute.
The first line of your reply is wrong, non stick pans are not perfectly safe. If we completely ignore the manufacturing waste, cooking in the pan at high temperatures, e.g. frying, breaks down and degrades the Teflon coating into a combination of hydrofluoric acid and short chain PFAS. This reaction seems to start to become noticeable at about 220C, which is practically guaranteed to be occurring an the intersection of metal and Teflon even at lower surface temperatures of 180-200C due to the extremely poor conductivity of Teflon.
Wait till you find out about the PFAS in the non stick pans
YSK the finished PFAS in the end product like non stick pans is perfectly safe. The long molecules with strong carbon-fluoride bonds don’t interact with biology at all. You can cut it up into tiny pieces and eat it, it will just come out the other end. Even if you were to implant it inside your body, it would do nothing. Actually materials like PTFE are often used for medical implants, specially because they are so inert and safe.
So why is PFAS bad? Because in the production of the long molecules, short molecules are required. Those molecules are a waste product after use and are usually dumped. In the past they were dumped in huge amounts. However these short molecules are very dangerous, they do interact with biology and cause all sorts of issues including cancer. The people at Dupont figured this out very quickly, but chose not to report on it. It took a long time for the issue to become public. With their waste material giving the company a bad name, they said they invented a new short molecule to use, which was much safer. Except it wasn’t safer at all, they knew it wasn’t and they again didn’t make that info public. After they were found out a second time, the governments classified all such chemicals under the PFAS family and regulated all of them.
Unfortunately our world runs on stuff like PTFE, so it’s still widely used, without any substitutes available. And we keep on dumping those dangerous short molecules into our environment. And because they don’t decay over time (hence the nickname forever chemicals) they are here to stay. We’ve also found out even a little bit of it can be dangerous and we’ve dumped a lot of it into our water supply. So that’s why PFAS is bad.
TLDR: If you own anything with PTFE or similar materials like non stick pans and cutting boards, don’t worry they are totally safe. Since the damage is already done, keep using them as much as possible, so the damage wasn’t for nothing. If you are going to buy new stuff: avoid any products with PFAS as a waste product. Governments are working on regulation to make this clearly visible when purchasing a product. The less we buy, the less we produce, the less we pollute.
The first line of your reply is wrong, non stick pans are not perfectly safe. If we completely ignore the manufacturing waste, cooking in the pan at high temperatures, e.g. frying, breaks down and degrades the Teflon coating into a combination of hydrofluoric acid and short chain PFAS. This reaction seems to start to become noticeable at about 220C, which is practically guaranteed to be occurring an the intersection of metal and Teflon even at lower surface temperatures of 180-200C due to the extremely poor conductivity of Teflon.