The Teflon Toxin • Hacker News Board

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#251

Post by spathi_fwiffo » Thu, Aug 13, 2015, 2:43 PM UTC

kaitai wrote: post #219

simoncion wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up with traditional CI cookware. I know how to season it and how to wash it. The roommate recently purchased an enameled cast iron skillet. The use and care guide was pretty poorly written. So, a couple of stupid questions on the topic follow: * The coating inside the pan is enamel, and doesn't need maintenance? * One needs to not use metal utensils (or steel wool) in order to not damage the coating? * One can…

As I understand it, * no maintenance for inside * don't use steel wool. With a stubborn stain I use a little baking soda, which some folks say is ok and others forbid. I use metal utensils despite being told not to. I use them gently and accept a few scratches; I try to avoid cutting things in the pan. I also wear contacts while swimming because I'm that kind of rebel. Meh. * Soap + water = great :)

In addition, a lot of enamel will just stain after some time, which is normal; This is why some of the vendors are just going with black enamel these days, instead of the long-used white. I haven't tried baking soda to clear up the stains on mine, I'll have to give it a shot.

Also, if the enamel cracks inside the cooking area of the pan, you may want to throw out the pan; it may expose your food to contact with toxins used in adhering the enamel.

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#252

Post by greenshackle » Thu, Aug 13, 2015, 3:12 PM UTC

rhino369 wrote: post #111

suprgeek wrote: post #17

Take the number of vehicles in the field, (A), and multiply it by the probable rate of failure, (B), then multiply the result by the average out-of- court settlement, (C). A times B times C equals X...If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one. What applies to the Car Industry (via Dialogue from Fight Club) applies to the Chemical Industry in Spades. DuPont Knew (or strongly suspected) that C8 & (Teflon)…

The crazier thing is that for negligence torts (cars would be products liability, which is different), that's exactly how the law works. It's called the "Hand Formula" and you are only liable for negligence when PL > B, where P is the probability of loss, L is the gravity of loss, and B is the cost of avoiding the risk. In practice though, it can be hard to argue that sort of thing. It's a little academic.

Yes, of course. In a resource-constrained world, i.e. the world we live in, spending more on prevention than the expected loss makes no sense.

Refusing to spend $10 to avoid a $5 expected loss is not negligence, it's economic common sense.

(You should still be liable for the loss if someone else is experiencing the risk. You should be liable to compensate them fairly, but it's not negligence).

In fact in a world with scarce risk prevention resources, PL = B is not even a sufficient criteria to say you should spend to prevent the risk, because there might be opportunities to prevent greater losses elsewhere; i.e. you should not be investing to prevent PL = B type risks if there exists PL >>> B type risks. (For a finance analogy, if you are capital-constrained, you don't want to put your money in any investment with a positive ROI, you want to put you money in investments that have the highest ROI.)

In other words, spending $10 to prevent a $10 expected loss risk when there is an opportunity to prevent a $100 expected loss risk for the same expenditure makes no sense.

But since we're not smart enough to cooperate and globally allocate the total risk-prevention budget to minimize losses, locally and in terms of personal responsibility PL = B is a decent rule.

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#253

Post by ectoplasm » Thu, Aug 13, 2015, 6:21 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #242

ectoplasm wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many reasons why a cast iron skillet inexplicably cracks. Poor quality control in manufacturing, natural crystalline formation defects, excessive impacts in handling, extreme thermal stresses, etc. Cast iron, being a non-ductile material, in the daily thermal cycling of cooking, any minute microscopic fissure will start to propagate through a process known as metal fatigue, and eventually fail catastrophica…

Can it really anneal at normal oven temperatures? Cast iron has a melting point of 2200F -- so how can 500F oven do anything?

I looked it up and the truth is in between. You get "ferritizing" annealing starting at 1300F. Microscopic amounts of that will happen at 500F but nothing significant. Thank you, now I will stop wasting my time with this piece of folklore...

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#254

Post by Retric » Fri, Aug 14, 2015, 11:39 AM UTC

superuser2 wrote: post #200

Retric wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use noise canceling headphones/ear buds to avoid the chatter and lower the volume. At ~300$ there not cheap, but not only do they help save your hearing they are also less distracting for those around you.

>avoid the chatter If active noise canceling seems to lower conversation volume, it is because you've convinced yourself it should. No DSP located on your ear can analyze and cancel an unpredictable signal like conversation before it reaches your ear. It can be effective against drone sounds like motors, rushing air, etc. because the same cancellation signal works now as did 100ms ago. This is not true of human speec…

1 v 1 they don't work, but they seem to help with 1 v 100 open office situations where the background of 100 people working. Granted, this might be by blocking the AC and other background sounds. But, I don't care why they help just that they do.

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#255

Post by abandonliberty » Fri, Aug 14, 2015, 3:10 PM UTC

fabian2k wrote: post #15

im3w1l wrote: post #7

Tl;dr? How badly am I destroying my health by using a Teflon pan?

Teflon pans are not a significant source of the perfluorooctanoic acid mentioned in the article. See https://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1539-6924.2008.01017.x for a bit more information, I quoted the relevant part here: Besides the pathways presented above, the following pathways have also been modeled: oral exposure from hand-to-mouth contact with clothes and upholstery, from mouthing of clothes, carpet, and upholstery…

They did cover ingestion, but what about the fumes released while cooking that are apparently capable of killing birds?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10050903

Also: Is there any way to identify where the funding came for this study - or studies in general?

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#256

Post by maxerickson » Fri, Aug 14, 2015, 3:22 PM UTC

spathi_fwiffo wrote: post #251

kaitai wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, * no maintenance for inside * don't use steel wool. With a stubborn stain I use a little baking soda, which some folks say is ok and others forbid. I use metal utensils despite being told not to. I use them gently and accept a few scratches; I try to avoid cutting things in the pan. I also wear contacts while swimming because I'm that kind of rebel. Meh. * Soap + water = great :)

In addition, a lot of enamel will just stain after some time, which is normal; This is why some of the vendors are just going with black enamel these days, instead of the long-used white. I haven't tried baking soda to clear up the stains on mine, I'll have to give it a shot. Also, if the enamel cracks inside the cooking area of the pan, you may want to throw out the pan; it may expose your food to contact with toxin…

I'd be more worried about eating chips of (sharp, hard) enamel than any toxins - the firing process is not going to leave much other than the ceramic behind.

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#257

Post by superuser2 » Sat, Aug 15, 2015, 7:15 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #254

superuser2 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>avoid the chatter If active noise canceling seems to lower conversation volume, it is because you've convinced yourself it should. No DSP located on your ear can analyze and cancel an unpredictable signal like conversation before it reaches your ear. It can be effective against drone sounds like motors, rushing air, etc. because the same cancellation signal works now as did 100ms ago. This is not true of human speec…

1 v 1 they don't work, but they seem to help with 1 v 100 open office situations where the background of 100 people working. Granted, this might be by blocking the AC and other background sounds. But, I don't care why they help just that they do.

I find the chatter of 100 (and AC and other background sounds) soothing and even necessary. It's when I can pick out individual conversations that I can't help but stop what I'm doing and process them.

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#258

Post by jschwartzi » Sun, Aug 16, 2015, 6:10 PM UTC

nickles wrote: post #184

jschwartzi wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is your example meant to illustrate the need for us to filter our drinking water and air if we live on the same planet as a DuPont plant?

>>Free markets when supported by strong property rights can have strong protections to prevent harm or pollution. >Can someone explain how this is supposed to work? I don't mean to sound rude/biased but this sounds like one of those cases where the theory is sound but when it meets with reality we get unpredictable(and sometimes disastrous) results. The example is meant to illustrate the mechanism being asked about b…

But it's implicit that if the train throws sparks(DuPont plant pollutes the air and water on the entire planet) that the most equitable thing for me to do as the farmer would be to build spark guards(filter my air and water no matter where I live). That way I can prevent my fields from catching fire(increased risk factors from Teflon surfactants).

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#259

Post by amag » Wed, Aug 19, 2015, 2:27 PM UTC

qiqing wrote: post #205

eevilspock wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Failure to protect a user's privacy. Advertising is our C8. It pollutes nearly every corner of the web with deception and manipulation. It is the cause of the cancer called click-bait. It is so profitable it has given rise to factories that pump out cheap junk "content", overwhelming anything of merit on the web[1][2]. Then, to extract even more from the devil in this Faustian bargain, we invade our very customer…

> Advertising is our C8. This. Not to mention the malware that hitches rides on ad networks. Adblockers being the new condoms and all that.

Nah, we can always protect ourselves from ads or malware. Worst case we can go completely offline or use an extremely locked down system.

C8 and similar compounds pollute the only inhabitable planet we have access to, there's no escape from the pollution. The man-made C8 will remain in the water and soil far longer than any human will be around, but before that it will accumulate in our bodies and poison us. And C8 is just one such compound, how many more are there?

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#260

Post by makomk » Thu, Aug 20, 2015, 7:34 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #241

codexjourneys wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

> What do you expect they will find? I expect them to tell the truth. Do you accuse them of lying? Because this is a very straightforward piece of research, it's not one of those cases where you can fudge the numbers with statistics, to cherry pick results out of nothing. I'm willing to believe that if this study had bad results they might not have published it (which is why affiliated-type studies usually have "good…

There are ways of being dishonest other than lying. For example, the smoke point of butter is 150°C, well below the 260°C lethal temperature the DuPont scientists found, so it'd be extremely difficult to reach that temperature by accident. On the other hand, Teflon fumes can (and fairly often do) kill birds at levels that aren't noticeable to human cooks at all.