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The Teflon Toxin

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Re: The Teflon Toxin

#231

Post by criddell »

kaitai wrote: post #216
criddell wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a bird in the kitchen is just a bad idea (unless you are going to eat it). If you overheat oil, that becomes toxic as well and will kill a small bird the same as overheating teflon.

You might have a house with a kitchen next to the living room and no door in between, and if you've got everything closed up in winter you can kill a bird in a nearby room with Teflon toxicity. Overheating oil will not kill a small bird, and even some quick smoke inhalation won't necessarily kill a bird. Smoke inhalation and Teflon toxicity are really different death mechanisms -- if you're interested, a quick read o…

Cooking oil fumes (not smoke) are toxic as well.

Butter in cast iron is toxic at 260 degrees. Teflon isn't toxic until 280 degrees.

Check out http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4723395

> Abstract: Japanese quail and parakeets were exposed to the pyrolysis products of: (1) commercial fry pans coated with Teflon® finish, (2) plastic fry pan handles, (3) corn oil, and (4) butter. Other materials used in the test were commercial aluminum fry pans and cast iron fry pans. A four-hour Approximate Lethal Temperature (ALT) was determined for each test material for each specie. All products tested were lethal to Japanese quail with ALT's ranging from 260° C for butter in cast iron to 370 °C for a plastic handle in a glass container. The ALT for a fry pan coated with Teflon® finish was 330°C. All products were also lethal to parakeets with ALT's of 260°C for both the pan coated with Teflon® finish plus butter and the cast iron pan plus butter. The ALT for a fry pan coated with Teflon® finish was 280°C.

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#232

Post by ars »

gruez wrote: post #230
ars wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the FDA. Before they approved teflon for use in cookware they tested it vs oil. Oil was found to be toxic at a lower temperature than teflon, making teflon safer than oil for high heat cooking. Obviously when I say "oil is toxic" I'm being sarcastic.

Not that I'm doubting you, but can I have the source for your claim? I want to present it to my chemophobic friends.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0002889738506828

Exposure of Japanese Quail and Parakeets to the Pyrolysis Products of Fry Pans Coated with Teflon® and Common Cooking Oils

Lethal temperature:

butter: 260°C/500°F

Teflon: 330°C/626°F

plastic handle: 370°C/698°F

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#233

Post by ars »

kaitai wrote: post #222
ars wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that advise is that oil releases MORE toxic fumes at a lower temperature than teflon. Teflon is safer than the oil you are cooking with. If you heated it hot enough to make fumes from the teflon you would have a cloud of smoke from the oil. They know this because did a test and found that oil is more toxic to birds than teflon. So go ahead and cook with teflon on high, it's safer than using a lot of…

You keep claiming that heated oil is a greater killer than heated Teflon. Do you have any sources where people can examine the evidence, or any evidence that you can present directly? I just can't find any evidence at all for your claims, even though you've posted the same thing about 12 times.

You didn't look very hard.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0002889738506828

Exposure of Japanese Quail and Parakeets to the Pyrolysis Products of Fry Pans Coated with Teflon® and Common Cooking Oils

Lethal temperature:

butter: 260°C/500°F

Teflon: 330°C/626°F

plastic handle: 370°C/698°F

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#234

Post by lnufnu »

NhanH wrote: post #11

On the topic of chemical, how do you know if something is dangerous -- in the context of household item? Even with the MSDS and/or knowledge of the compositions, layman doesn't really have any sense on how dangerous something is (as it's all missing dosage). I'm a bit on the paranoid side (mostly because I think my roommate/ housemate has always been too liberal with spraying chemicals crap everywhere), and most of t…

The Environmental Working Group has great resources. They are a non-profit that has databases of household cleaning products, body care, baby care, and cosmetics reviewed and rated according to risk. You can find many brand name products, learn about common ingredients, and find new recommendations with little risk by searching a generic catagory. You can check out the individual ingredients in the database with what research supports the specific risks associated with it. They also publish excellent consumer guides for produce, cleaning, and sunscreen.

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#235

Post by reedlaw »

hobs wrote: post #114
reedlaw wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most serious is ignoring the effects of sitting all day. Employers tout their big monitors and new laptops but I've never seen one advertise treadmill workstations. Another rationalization is that longer work hours are somehow mutually beneficial but I find the opposite to be true.

>but I've never seen one advertise treadmill workstations. Look again. Anecdotally, I have actually seen them advertise this, and my company decided to get two. I see people using it all the time, but I have yet to see anyone do in depth work requiring interaction with the machine, mostly just reading and researching.

I was working at a treadmill workstation for 8 hours a day coding. Physically it felt great but eventually the number of hours concentrating on code wore me down. Now I work two hours a day on code and spend the rest of the day doing other activities. I was burned out coding at regular hours which makes me incredulous of those who claim productivity at 60+ hours a week.

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#236

Post by fluidcruft »

simoncion wrote: post #228
fluidcruft wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "seasoning" the pan achieves anything at all, doesn't it necessarily have to result in some sort of coating of the pan's surface?

Yes. Seasoning leaves a baked-on coating of oil/fat. That doesn't mean that the coating is carcinogenic. IIRC (and I might not RC, I'm no food chemist) the coating is polymerized oil/fat and completely harmless.

At smoking point, carcinogens are created both in the gas and what's left behind.

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#237

Post by specialist »

13years wrote: post #64
azinman2 wrote: post #3

Horrible. This is what's so scary about the free market and our current chemical regulations of innocent until proved guilty. People cover up, even the biggest most "professional" here (DuPont), and the public gets decades of abuse. Why is it that medication requires FDA approval with lots of animal/human tests before you can sell it, but chemicals do not? Here the tests internally done showed prove of issue year aft…

Free markets when supported by strong property rights can have strong protections to prevent harm or pollution. Non free markets, although regulated, don't necessarily perform better and can even perform worse in this regard. The FDA is a great example of an agency which often can be seen to work harder to protect the industry than the individual. For example, look up the story of Vioxx. A drug which killed 50k peopl…

I'm fascinated by this idea of "free markets". Please, can you provide a real world example?

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#238

Post by specialist »

toufka wrote: post #186
ars wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teflon is not toxic. Some precursors are but once made it's completely inert. And a frying pan is mostly metal, it'll get recycled at some point and the teflon burned away anyway.

'not toxic' - until you heat it above its suggested operating temperature - which as I recall is about the temp of a 'high' setting on a stove.

I don't recall reading that caveat on the box my teflon pans arrived in.

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#239

Post by specialist »

13years wrote: post #209
makomk wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this article demonstrates why that doesn't actually work in practice. DuPont contaminated several counties with a toxic chemical over the course of a decade, affecting many people's property, yet because the owners didn't even know to test for it and weren't in a position to prove that it was dangerous, let alone prove that it had harmed them specifically, DuPont got away with this.

Possibly, but it would seem to nonetheless also demonstrate why regulation also doesn't work in practice. From the article. "...THE FEDERAL TOXIC SUBSTANCES Control Act requires companies that work with chemicals to report to the Environmental Protection Agency any evidence they find that shows or even suggests that they are harmful..." What many people don't realize, is that EPA and FDA rely on the trust of the priv…

So the fix for regulatory capture is to abolish regulations?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#240

Post by codexjourneys »

ars wrote: post #233
kaitai wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep claiming that heated oil is a greater killer than heated Teflon. Do you have any sources where people can examine the evidence, or any evidence that you can present directly? I just can't find any evidence at all for your claims, even though you've posted the same thing about 12 times.

You didn't look very hard. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0002889738506828 Exposure of Japanese Quail and Parakeets to the Pyrolysis Products of Fry Pans Coated with Teflon® and Common Cooking Oils Lethal temperature: butter: 260°C/500°F Teflon: 330°C/626°F plastic handle: 370°C/698°F

All three authors work for DuPont. What do you expect they will find?

"FRANKLIN D. GRIFFITHa, SUSAN S. STEPHENSa & FIGEN O. TAYFUNa"

"Author affiliations" Footnote a: "a Haskell Laboratory for Toxicology and Industrial Medicine, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Wilmington, Delaware 19898"

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