[blam]

I always wondered about this.

[Robert A. Cook, PE]

So we shouldn't cook food (or use easily-cleanable pots!) because we MIGHT release A LITTLE BIT of (maybe NOT EVEN TOXIC) chemicals into the food?

We're all gonna die!

[cripplecreek]

My great grandmother refused to cook in aluminium. She would use it for food storage but refused to cook in it.

[Retired Chemist]

250°C hot plate

That's a lot hotter than they are normally used.

[Sun]

Wonder if the food industry's lobbyist will try to keep this as quiet as possible?

[Bahbah]

If this were actually dangerous, blam, I would be dead.

[mtbopfuyn]

Use iron cookware and you won't need Geritol!

[Doomonyou]

When the researchers popped corn in the microwave bags, gaseous emissions contained low amounts of PFOA and high amounts of fluorotelomer alcohols. The oily coatings left inside the bags contained the chemicals as well, the team reports.

And if you eat 25 bags a day for 47 years you will have a .02% of developing colon cancer.

[lowbridge]

Your frying pan can kill you. But only if your wife finds you guilty.

[toldyou]

"Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20031011/note17.asp)"

Is this saying that for us to find out which ones are dangerous to our health, we have to subscribe to this publication?

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

So what prompted these non-stick pans to come into existence? The banishment of LARD AND COOKING OILS!

[Robert A. Cook, PE]

My letter to the editor:

So we shouldn't cook food (or use easily-cleanable pots!) because we MIGHT release A LITTLE BIT of (maybe NOT EVEN TOXIC) chemicals into the food?

SO we should vent (expensive already heated or air conditioned and humidified indoors air) from the kitchen (wasting BILLIONS in heating oil, gas, and electrically generated BTU's ...

All because a COMMON chemical found worldwide is merely SUSPECTED of being linked to worldwide rates of exposure.

A practical question from this engineer:

If the chemical is found in trace amounts in humans worldwide,
and US-built coated pots ARE NOT capable of contaminating
(1) people worldwide who don't use coated American pots, and
(2) people worldwide who can't afford US pots (the vast majority)
(3) people worldwide and in the US clean their pots BETTER (yielding less food poisoning from cleaner pots that are less scarred by scraping and dirt!)

... then WHY are our US companies being forced to abandon a proven helpful chemical?

The results of this ruling are dirtier pots and MORE deaths from food poisoning, millions in development and research wasted, more millions is changing chemicals that produce a worse job of protecting the pots from scarring, billions more wasted as consumer replace torn up pots not well protected by the new chemicals. And NO GOOD.

[DigitalVideoDude]

Yeah, but it's ~my~ cookware.

[Clara Lou]

I only use mine at temperatures high enough to scramble an egg. I have my trusty cast iron skillets for the hot stuff.

[Kevmo]

Bump for later reading

[gcruse]

Flushing the toilet with the lid up doesn't do wonders for the surrounding area, either.

[leda]

non-stick pans are about the most useless things.
i only use my ancient cast iron pans or stainless
steel revere ware. even my cookie sheets are
those huge restaurant sized stainless steel pans.

[Texas_shutterbug]

Well, those nonstick pots release something since it can kill small domestic birds like parakeets...or so bird owners are warned, anyway.

[Myrddin]

The first attempts at making non-stick Teflon pans had some deadly consequences. The tetrafluoroethylene could depolymerize at high temperatures. In gaseous form it is a potent neurotoxin. The phenomenon was discovered the hard way when all the employees of a bakery using the early teflon pans died when they became overheated. Later improvement in the "end groups" reduced the probability of the depolymerizing.

[WV Mountain Mama]

They can have my nonstick frying pan...

[nascarnation]

In the 1950s I played with mercury as a kid, in a home filled with leaded paint and asbestos tile, ate lots of fish from Lake Erie (fed by the infamous Cuyahoga River)
and breathed air from the steel mills of the "flats" of Cleveland and the carbonaceous diesel exhaust of city buses. As a teenager I pumped thousands of gallons of leaded gasoline working at a service station.

I'm not sweatin' a little teflon in my omelet, LOL

[Fzob]

Our friendly lawyers are seeking a class action lawsuit claiming PFOA is a hazard.


http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/manufacturing/2005-07-19-teflon_x.htm

[Fzob]

Our friendly lawyers are seeking a class action lawsuit claiming PFOA is a hazard.


http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/manufacturing/2005-07-19-teflon_x.htm

[TXnMA]

This gahrbahge is as old as Teflon...

[Fiddlstix]

I use the old standard. Good 'ol cast iron. Nothin' else like it.
My cast iron has been passed down for three generations.
It's seasoned so well nothing will stick to it.

[goldstategop]

Liberals say food sucks. They say cooking sucks. Now they say cookware sucks. They people are full of doom and gloom about domestic life.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[westmichman]

How much did they spend on this study? I remember hearing this about 20 years ago.

[Tailback]

1) The temperatures at which noxious gasses are released by teflon coated pans, coincidently, are the temperatures at which the coating is ruined for further use. If you are not retarded, you will notice when this event occurs.

2) For most non-stick applications, a well seasoned cast iron frying pan is just as good if not better than a teflon coated aluminum pan. Unfortunately, to reach that level of seasoning takes up to 1 minute more each time the pan is used than throwing a $15 dollar teflon pan into the dishwasher and replacing the teflon pan every 2-3 years.

3) For cooking french omelettes, crepes, and other egg based dishes where light and fluffy is nice without a lot of butter or oil added, teflon is the cat's meow. The temperatures used to cook these dishes comes nowhere near the off-gassing (destruction) point of teflon.

4) People no longer learn how to cook healty and use kitchen tools properly. My deceased parents were outstanding cooks, and I kick myself often for not learning more from them while they were alive. We were very poor growing up but we ate like kings! I constantly amaze my (other side of the tracks) wife and in-laws by looking at what's in the fridge and coming up with healthy and delicious meals out of leftovers. Thank God for the Food Network, hopefully there will be a renaissance in the USA for cooking and eating healthy and delicious instead of what can be popped into the microwave for 5 minutes.

6) Teflon pans are tools that must be used properly, same for seasoned cast iron, stainless clad aluminum (all-clad), copper, enameled cast iron (le crueset), and any other pot or pan. Use any of them wrong and your meal is inedible. I use all of the above products depending on the dish and ingredient. I eat very well and friends and family always ask me to cook during get-togethers.

[MEGoody]

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE (some day from something)!!!

[CodeToad]

When I bought an African Gray bird the breeder told us to never scortch a teflon pan or the bird will die.

[ryan71]

I stop using non-stick a long time ago. It's junk. I only use stainless, no aluminum.

[R. Scott]

Not only will our cookware kill us, but what we cook will kill us too.
Meat not cooked at the right temperature will cause cancer.
Veggies will kill us because of pesticides and herbicides.
“Organically grown” veggies will kill us with E coli.
Our water is contaminated with a variety of evil chemicals and will kill us.
The air we breath will kill us because of pollution.

[TChris]

Chemist Kurunthachalam Kannan and his New York State government team, based in Albany, performed the tests on four brands of nonstick fry pans and two brands of microwave popcorn. Their findings appear online and in an upcoming Environmental Science & Technology. (emphasis added)

Well this was clearly an exhaustive study. ...not!