Posted on 01/26/2007 3:42:45 PM PST by blam
Heating releases cookware chemicals
Janet Raloff
Nonstick coatings on fry pans and microwave-popcorn bags can, when heated, release traces of potentially toxic perfluorinated chemicals into the air and the food being cooked, a new study suggests. Although the chemicals aren't subject to any regulatory restriction and have uncertain toxicity, the researchers conducting the study suggest that people at least run kitchen-exhaust fans when using these products. A 2005 industry study found no such releases.
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.
The scientists heated new fry pans of various brands on a 250°C hot plate for 20 minutes. About half the samples released high amounts of gaseous fluorotelomer alcohols (SN: 10/11/03, p. 238: Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20031011/note17.asp) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). The team heated two pans three more times to see if the chemical releases would fall as pans age. That occurred with one pan but not with the other.
The team also detected PFOA in water boiled for 10 minutes in two of the five pans tested.
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. The group didn't reveal the brands of nonstick pans or popcorn bags that it tested.
Cookware manufacturers have pledged to phase out PFOA, used to make some nonstick coatings, by 2015. The chemical is a suspected carcinogen, nervous system poison, and estrogen mimic found in the blood of people worldwide (SN: 3/25/06, p. 190: Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060325/note17.asp; 12/2/06, p. 366: Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20061202/note16.asp).
If you have a comment on this article that you would like considered for publication in Science News, send it to editors@sciencenews.org. Please include your name and location.
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!
My great grandmother refused to cook in aluminium. She would use it for food storage but refused to cook in it.
That's a lot hotter than they are normally used.
Wonder if the food industry's lobbyist will try to keep this as quiet as possible?
If this were actually dangerous, blam, I would be dead.
Use iron cookware and you won't need Geritol!
And if you eat 25 bags a day for 47 years you will have a .02% of developing colon cancer.
Your frying pan can kill you. But only if your wife finds you guilty.
"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?
So what prompted these non-stick pans to come into existence? The banishment of LARD AND COOKING OILS!
Then again, I'm the kind of guy who can taste whether you've got plastic or copper pipes in your house, and microwave popcorn nauseates me because it smells rancid.
"So what prompted these non-stick pans to come into existence?"
The automatic dishwasher. We all got lazy and refuse to scour pots and pans with food stuck to them.
LOL!
If people learned how to cook and clean their pots properly, we wouldn't even have this discussion. I'm an avid cook, both indoor and outdoor and I don't use a single nonstick pan.
All of mine are stainless steel with iron bases. Pretty easy to clean assuming you are minding what you are doing both during cooking and the cleanup phase.
Personally, I support your freedom to ingest toxic chemicals. Have fun.
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.
Yeah, but it's ~my~ cookware.
I only use mine at temperatures high enough to scramble an egg. I have my trusty cast iron skillets for the hot stuff.
Bump for later reading
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