Posted on 06/09/2006 8:55:29 PM PDT by neverdem
LIKE many home cooks, I have sent my nonstick skillets to the moldy recesses of my basement, where they have joined the 1950's aluminum pots and the Dru casseroles (Dutch enamel coated cast iron, now eBay collectibles).
What led to this step were unsettling reports that an overheated Teflon-coated pan may release toxic gases. DuPont, the manufacturer of Teflon, says that its pans are safe and that their surfaces won't decompose, possibly releasing the gas, until the pan's temperature reaches 680 degrees. Some scientists say that an empty pan left on a burner set on high reaches 700 degrees in as little as three minutes. All pans with nonstick coatings are subject to the same problems, according to the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit environmental research and advocacy organization.
I banished the skillets last year and spent months dithering over what to buy while making do with the pans I had left: a large Revere Ware skillet with a concave bottom; a small, warped hand-me-down from my mother; and a medium All-Clad in fine shape.
A few passes at online pot sellers made matters worse: there are too many choices. Finally, after consulting the ratings from Consumer Reports and Cook's Illustrated and calling several experts, I decided to do a test of my own, using the most highly recommended pans, along with a few of my own choices.
While Teflon lets manufacturers make inexpensive pans usable, uncoated cheap pans have hot spots, so cheaper pans — other than cast iron — were never considered.
--snip--
There were eight pans in the test, most of them 12 inches in diameter: All-Clad with an aluminum core, All-Clad with a copper core, Bourgeat copper; De Buyer carbon steel; Calphalon anodized aluminum; seasoned and unseasoned Lodge cast iron and Le Creuset enameled cast iron.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Bar "Keepers" Friend. It's a powdered cleanser usually stocked with the Ajax and Comet. If you cannot find it, Zud is a similar formula.
But try this first, fill pan with ammonia and enclose it overnight in a tightly sealed garbage bag. When you remove pan, watch out so ammonia fumes don't knock you over like a punch from a boxer :-). Scrub with a brush in the sink, and probably the grease residue will be all gone without need for any other cleanser.
I blew up a pyrex pan, too, but I didn't need medical attention afterward! That was a crazy story. But you never told us... how the garlic bread tasted!
When dealing with glass break messes, vacuum cleaners are your friend....
The only flourocarbons are at the level given in the above post and they're completely nontoxic. That's what would be present in an excellent vacuum. It's the decomp that matters and the major toxic thermal decomposition product is HF. The concentration is still pretty low though unless one stuck their nose in and took a deep breath, it wouldn't matter much to most folks. If it was a regular occurance, folks could develope flourosis. It's the F- that has the effect and the gas from one burnt pan dispersed in the kitchen would be like swallowing a part of a tube of toothpaste. The aldehydes and acids from the burnt carbon once the HF strips off are what cause the fierce, pungent smell.
Which, on another important note, is why ethanol is not so good as a motor fuel.
I'll take your word for the levels of it. HF from my college chemistry is scary stuff, F2 scarier. HF is in Whink brand liquid rust removal cleaner, which warns ominously of delayed action burns if it gets on skin. But maybe if you gargled it you would never get tooth cavities for the rest of your life. (Just kidding)
(and more litany from http://www.ewg.org/reports/toxicteflon/chemicals.php, an alarmist looking environmental website)
They also say that the particles released from the hot teflon (smoke) seem to have a lot to do with the ill effects in rat tests. Getting the toxic gases into the lungs and keeping them there, like dust or smoke particles do with radon. I wonder if burned food would prove equally noxious.
Pick up a bottle of Whink rust remover, for example.
Or google for HF MSDS...
Full Disclosure: Yes, I know concentration matters.
I have two cast iron dutch ovens. I used them for frying for a while, and now that their well seasoned I can make soups and stews and whatever without losing the seasoning. I NEVER use soap on them though. That'll kill ya quick.
Cookin' is good...
Having vaporized a pound of pork sausage in the house once, I can definitly say yes. The thick grease cloud contained enough aldehydes and acids, it resembled tear gas. The temps I posted in #30 should be degrees F.
The list you posted from the enviro site requires a controlled temp hold and the products come off at extremely low levels and at a slow rate. It's also a bit wrong and misleading. PFIB (perfluoroisobutane) is perfluoroisobutene and not much of this will be produced. Too much O2 present. The bulk of the depolymerization product is perfluoroethylene and some low MW polymer. At these temps in air, it goes to COF2. That's hydrolyzed by humidity immediately to HF + CO2. Otherwise what cools before it gets oxidized is still at too low a level to produce harmful levels.
On the stove the temp usually shoots up beyond this and the stuff starts reacting with oxygen, looses F2 burns and chars. Once a small amount of F2 is produced, the charring is catastrophic. Teflon is also a highly crystaline polymer, so to get significant depolymerization, the crystals have to be melted and I think that's ~300 C. That's around the sintering temp used to form it. I've used a torch to form parts by hand at that temp and never noticed any significant gas. It's easy to burn with a torch though if it's overheated, because it's an insulator. The result is char and the smoke is mostly HF. It etches the polished stainless tools.
At any rate if the pan stays at normal cooking temps, <500oF, there's no problem. At temps in that range, the food's not being cooked, it's being burnt. The pan has to be left on the burner empty. I checked some old teflon frypans that are over 25-30 y/o that were used by Oscar Madison. There's still no significant weight loss in the teflon coating and they still work. Most teflon pans are thick Al, so local overheating when frying is impossible, because of the very high thermal conductivity.
I think I had a teflon pan once, a couple of decades ago. My rule: stainless steel, iron, and some glass pans in the oven, or s.s. That's it. Actually, we have non-stainless steel bread pans.
That frying pan looks really good.
Teflon cookware is forbidden in my house.
Careful, or somebody will actually think Teflon caused their deaths. Dupont has held for forty or fifty years now that for normal use (and with some significant leeway, no doubt) Teflon cookware does not emit toxic gases. Teflon pans might emit toxic gases if you put them on a hot burner with nothing in them, but why would you do that? You're supposed to cook food in them, not nothing. And are pet birds just now dying from these Teflon fumes? People have had birds for all of this time.
Teflon must be too convenient, I guess. This makes very little sense to me. There are known carcinogens (supposedly) in many things - such as diet soda and blackened food. The thing is, you would need to drink like 300 cans of diet soda in a day to see an effect. I'm fairly certain you would explode if you drank 300 cans of diet soda in a day.
Add this one to the list of environmental scares, the most recent, I think, being New Orleans.
Hey there, I have more questions. If we can't use soap on it, how do you get the food off? Just scrub with hot water?
Also, I'd like to get a round cast iron skillet, but one that does not weight twenty pounds. Do they make any that are combination or thinner?
Thanks!
bttt
bump
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