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Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ contaminate indoor air at worrying levels

theguardian.com

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Re: Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ contaminate indoor air at worrying levels

#111

Post by atom_arranger »

nate_meurer wrote: post #83
atom_arranger wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren't any long term studies comparing people who cook with non-stick vs stainless or cast iron, so we can only guess about long term and population level effects based on limited information. I personally would not take the risk given the benefit is just a pan that things stick to less. Medical uses are more justifiable.

No, we have lots of long term information about nonstick cookware. People forget we've been using teflon cookware since the 1950's. There have been billions of pieces of nonstick cookware in use every day around the world for decades. The problem is that because there are so many free PFAS chemicals around us from other sources, studying the possible effects of cookware is a bit like studying whether it contains evil…

> No, we have lots of long term information about nonstick cookware. People forget we've been using nonstick cookware since the 1950's.

That’s not a study.

> You won't be able to come up with a falsifiable hypothesis, because our PFC exposure via other routes is so high.

We’re so poisoned by these chemicals it’s impossible to run a study to figure out if one possible source of them specifically is measurably poisoning us. Maybe we should consider banning them, or just avoiding them in general.

> PFAS surfactants are used in the manufacture of the coatings, but it boils off when the coating is baked

See sibling comments.

> if you handle a water resistant jacket and then eat a sandwich, you'll ingest measureable quanities of PFAS

I try to avoid synthetic fabrics when I can, so in my case it’s not like your lifeguard scenario.

I also think the government should step in to limit the use of plastics generally.

Re: Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ contaminate indoor air at worrying levels

#112

Post by toss1 »

meristohm wrote: post #73
toss1 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>We need to flip the approval process on its head -- from "safe until proven otherwise" to "unsafe until (independently) proven safe". Totally agree in principle. There is one fly in the ointment - it is impossible to prove a negative, such as "X does not exist" or "there is no possible harm from this to any person ever" (water would not meet that standard). So, this needs to be implemented in such a way as to not c…

What is progress?

I consider progress to be getting closer to technology that gets us out of the unsustainable ecological/biosystems hole which we have dug for ourselves.

We are not going to put the technological genie back in the bottle, short of eliminating 98+% of all humans and reverting back to hunter-gatherer tribes.

The only solution is to go through this dirty technology cycle and build and implement clean sustainable technologies that allow us to live with something resembling current populations without destroying the climate system, breaking the food web, or poisoning ourselves (& everything else).

So, yes, the only thing worse than halting all progress now would be to do it a decade age before solar, wind, etc. became viable, but we need a lot more progress, i.e., better performance for lower costs - both ecological & economical - for most of our technologies, and eliminating those destructive technologies. That would be progress.

What's your definition?

Re: Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ contaminate indoor air at worrying levels

#113

Post by nate_meurer »

bumby wrote: post #46
kaitai wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People "overheat" their cookware all the time. Do you know anyone who measures the temp of the surface of their cookware? Teflon and nonstick coatings kill birds (house pets) when overheated. A nonstick pan in the oven to catch the drippings from your chicken baking at 400 or 425 can kill your parrot quickly. A nonstick wok left unattended for a few minutes during a high-heat stir fry easily reaches 400, enough to ki…

I was maybe (mis)remembering studies that showed the pans had to be heated to a high-temperature relatively fast (in the order of under a second) for the off-gassing to occur, but I couldn't find that yet. I did find some interesting information about the dangers at different temperatures [1] and common cooking temperatures[2]. Without finding that study about quickly heating being necessary, they seem to corroborate…

Notice that the reports in your first link of PTFE coatings breaking down at less than 260 deg C are anecdotal. The lowest temperature at which PTFE coatings have been verified to give off breakdown products is 240 deg C. Even then, the only detected product was PTFE sublimate (small particles of PTFE flying off), which can lead to what we call "fume fever" if it's inhaled in large quantities, but reports of this happening in real life are rare, even in factory workers who are exposed at higher levels.

PTFE is chemically stable well past 300 deg C (540 deg F) and many nonstick cookware lines are marketed for these temperatures. For example, I have Calphalon pans labelled for use up to 550 deg F, which are advertised for searing steak. I get them pretty hot, and they show no signs of degradation.

At around 360 deg F (650 deg F), PTFE starts to give off detectable pyrolysis products, which are theoretically able to cause health problems, but even then reports of actual harm are few and far between. This is remarkable given that billions of pieces of nonstick cookware have been in use every day around the world for the past seventy years. Between the end users and the factory workers who make stuff, and all of the accidents and episodes of overheating that occur all the time, if there were going to be significant health effects I think they'd show up by now.

The real problem is the PFAS chemicals that are sprayed on our clothes, upholstery, carpeting and other home furnishings, that the military and civilian airports have dumped in our water supplies. This is a shaping up to be a true environmental catastrophe, and the manufacturers of nonstick coatings have no doubt contributed to this pollution. But the teflon cookware itself is not the slightest threat.

Re: Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ contaminate indoor air at worrying levels

#114

Post by mahogany »

verall wrote: post #79
kaitai wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People "overheat" their cookware all the time. Do you know anyone who measures the temp of the surface of their cookware? Teflon and nonstick coatings kill birds (house pets) when overheated. A nonstick pan in the oven to catch the drippings from your chicken baking at 400 or 425 can kill your parrot quickly. A nonstick wok left unattended for a few minutes during a high-heat stir fry easily reaches 400, enough to ki…

Because rice will still stick to the cast iron and enamel pans? People don't just choose PTFE because they are lazy. I tried a carbon steel, cast iron, and "oiled enamel" and rice stuck to all of them.

But people must have cooked rice in pans before these recent inventions. How did they do it?

Re: Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ contaminate indoor air at worrying levels

#115

Post by doctorsher »

verall wrote: post #98
meristohm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might go with “because they are lazy” for many of the shortcuts we take. We have one well-seasoned cast-iron pan and several not-so-well-seasoned which I’ve been too lazy to properly treat, so for now I spend the extra time scrubbing. I even use soap (!), though only after the dog gets the big stuff off. Teflon pans required too much care, so we never repaced them. I agree that rice sticks easily to iron pans, so I…

I think that you are correct in most cases, people choose nonstick for the easy cleanup afterwards. But that's not what I'm referring to. I have not found a pan, other than PTFE coated, which can fry rice to crispy without using excessive tons of oil. All of the best crispy rice will get stuck to the pan and become inedible.

When you tried the carbon steel pan, was it properly seasoned? They stick like hell before they are well seasoned, but seasoning them gives the carbon steel its non-stick properties. Woks are the ultimate tool for this, as they are carbon steel (so non-stick when seasoned) and their shape minimizes the amount of oil necessary to fry the rice. It is ubiquitous for fried rice across almost all of Asia.

Re: Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ contaminate indoor air at worrying levels

#116

Post by nate_meurer »

atom_arranger wrote: post #111
nate_meurer wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we have lots of long term information about nonstick cookware. People forget we've been using teflon cookware since the 1950's. There have been billions of pieces of nonstick cookware in use every day around the world for decades. The problem is that because there are so many free PFAS chemicals around us from other sources, studying the possible effects of cookware is a bit like studying whether it contains evil…

> No, we have lots of long term information about nonstick cookware. People forget we've been using nonstick cookware since the 1950's. That’s not a study. > You won't be able to come up with a falsifiable hypothesis, because our PFC exposure via other routes is so high. We’re so poisoned by these chemicals it’s impossible to run a study to figure out if one possible source of them specifically is measurably poisonin…

> We’re so poisoned by these chemicals it’s impossible to run a study to figure out if one possible source of them specifically is measurably poisoning us.

Sort of. My point is that teflon cookware is not a plausible source of PFAS, because there is no detectable PFAS in finished cookware. Further, because there have been billions of pieces of nonstick cookware in use around the world for decades, if there were negative health effects we would probably notice them by now. But there aren't.

Contrast this to the lead that has been widely used in glass and ceramic cookware and dishes over the same period of time. Manufacturers claimed that lead bearing glazes were perfectly safe. This is false, but we don't need any "studies" to tell us that. Rather we've plainly seen tangible health effects from the use of these items in many medical reports over the years, and we can easily test and verify the presence of lead that is leached into foods that are cooked and served in them.

This is not the case with teflon cookware. There is no detectable PFAS in nonstick cookware, nor are there verifiable reports of health effects from its use, in spite of the millions or billions of such uses happening every day over decades.

> See sibling comments.

Which ones? The ones where I addressed the poorly substantiated risks of overheating?

> I try to avoid synthetic fabrics when I can, so in my case it’s not like your lifeguard scenario.

I guarantee you're not able to avoid PFAS-treated upholstery, carpeting, and other home furnishings. And depending on where you live, chances are good that you ingest significant amounts of PFAS in your drinking water. If you've ever eaten fast food, the wrapper it came in was probably coated in PFAS. Due to these and other sources, I guarantee you have measurable levels of PFAS in your blood and tissues.

So by all means, avoid nonstick cookware if you want. It won't hurt, and it may have value just because it makes you feel better. That's legit. But in terms of actual harm reduction it is very much like the theoretical lifeguard blacking out his windows.

Re: Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ contaminate indoor air at worrying levels

#117

Post by GordonS »

nate_meurer wrote: post #51
GordonS wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With every non-stick pan I've ever owned, the coating eventually starts flaking off. Usually after less than 1 year of use. I'm pretty sure I must have ingested plenty of these coatings over the years...

I have many pieces of well-used nonstick cookware well over a decade old, which are in pretty much the same condition as when I bought them. This includes cheap IKEA pans that my kids used. Some of them get used literally every day. We don't overheat them, and don't use metal utensils in them, and there's no reason they can't last forever. Regardless, you can eat the entire coating off of your pan, and there will be…

Hmm, sounds like you've got lucky with your pans - everyone I've ever mentioned this too has had the same problem with non-stick pans! Lifetime of 6-12 months tops :/

I never did use metal utensils with them; it might be I overheated some, but certainly not all, and a pan isn't much use if you can't get it hot!

Re: Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ contaminate indoor air at worrying levels

#118

Post by jszymborski »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #80
jszymborski wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, banning GMO's outright would be a huge problem, but is it so awful that they be tested first? I don't know if they test for this, but GMOs do run the risk of become invasive or destructive species which could potentially tilt things towards the "devastating famine" side of the equation. I don't think the ecological concern is what most people worry about when they think GMOs, and I'm not of the mind that GMOs =…

I think what the argument comes down to is how much risk we're willing to tolerate as a society. There's definitely a middle ground to be had between an under-cautious world where things like leaded petrol and thalidomide are on the market causing immense human suffering, and an overly cautious world where progress is suffocated by the glacially slow wheels of bureaucracy and endless spurious "safety" objections by l…

I think that's fair criticism.

I've enough friends who work for the Canadian government or university administration to know that there is a coveted and illusive middle ground where vital regulation doesn't grind all it touches to a hapless stand-still.

Hot take: I think the HN software dev crowd might not be the worst equipped to help towards addressing these sorts of problem. From the horror stories I hear, disciplined approaches to tooling could solve a class of problems that appear to be pervasive.

Re: Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ contaminate indoor air at worrying levels

#119

Post by [deleted] »

nate_meurer wrote: post #94
slumdev wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The lowest temperature that has lead to bird deaths in a controlled laboratory setting is 280 deg C "Did any birds die?" is an approach to this problem that I would expect from an undeveloped nation a hundred years ago. It is both excruciatingly short-term in focus and so imprecise that the results are useless for anyone who is not himself a rat or a canary. Your data answers the question, "To what temperature must…

> "Did any birds die?" is an approach to this problem that I would expect from an undeveloped nation a hundred years ago. It is both excruciatingly short-term in focus and so imprecise that the results are useless for anyone who is not himself a rat or a canary. I sort of agree, but birds do make a convenient study subject because they are exquisitely sensitive, much more so than humans. The lowest temperature at whi…

[deleted]

Re: Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ contaminate indoor air at worrying levels

#120

Post by sampo »

jszymborski wrote: post #63
BoxOfRain wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which isn't without issues of its own of course, for example the EU is notoriously backwards on the issue of genetically modified crops which may turn out to be a vital lifeline if climate change causes agricultural collapse. Another example I can think of off the top of my head is the atrociously bad legislation to what was then the new technology of vaping, it came in pre-Brexit just when I was considering quitting…

Sure, banning GMO's outright would be a huge problem, but is it so awful that they be tested first? I don't know if they test for this, but GMOs do run the risk of become invasive or destructive species which could potentially tilt things towards the "devastating famine" side of the equation. I don't think the ecological concern is what most people worry about when they think GMOs, and I'm not of the mind that GMOs =…

> GMOs do run the risk of become invasive or destructive species

Crop plants don't run the risk to become invasive or destructive species. They are bred to be easily digestible food sources, which the exact opposite of the strategy for surviving in the wild.

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