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Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

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Re: Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

#241

Post by CrHn3 »

DevX101 wrote: post #127
elil17 wrote: post #2

The study didn’t actually find anything related to cookware. Modern Teflon in the US doesn’t expose people to PFOA/PFOS like old version did due to new regulations. The chemicals could also be entering peoples body’s through drinking water or bioaccumulation in meat or plants. You should throw away nonstick cookware from before 2013, but new nonstick cookware sold in the US does not have PFOA. I believe the EU follow…

I appreciate you updating your comment with an informed update that contradicted your initial argument. When a consumer chemical is discovered to be harmful, there's a tendency from companies to ask their research chemists to come up with a new chemical that shares the same beneficial properties but without the baggage of the provably dangerous chemical. There's a VERY good chance that the new chemical simply hasn't…

IMO, the biggest risk is infant exposure. Infants are exposed to more micro plastics than adults [1]. Bottle fed babies may be exposed to over 1.5 million particles of microplastics per day on average [2].

We avoid plastic in our kitchen (especially heating it in the dishwasher and microwave) but plastic is difficult to get away from when pumping breast milk. All pumps on the market, aside from silicone hand pumps, have plastic parts that require sanitization after every use.

1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-020-00171-y#article-i...

2. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.estlett.1c00559

Re: Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

#242

Post by purpleblue »

elil17 wrote: post #2

The study didn’t actually find anything related to cookware. Modern Teflon in the US doesn’t expose people to PFOA/PFOS like old version did due to new regulations. The chemicals could also be entering peoples body’s through drinking water or bioaccumulation in meat or plants. You should throw away nonstick cookware from before 2013, but new nonstick cookware sold in the US does not have PFOA. I believe the EU follow…

I use stainless steel pans, which are great. They are pretty much indestructible and not as expensive as I imagined. I think it's less than $100 for a stainless steel frying pan and I just use butter or olive oil to oil the pans and it's great. Sometimes things get burnt but an SOS pad a little elbow grease and it's back to normal.

Re: Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

#244

Post by yuan43 »

There isn't a human alive today whose blood is free from PFOA and/or PFOS. The question to answer is what are the major routes by which this is happening.

There is a lot of discussion in this thread about cookware. The problem is that these chemicals are now found throughout the environment and used in countless products. The stuff is found increasingly in drinking water and foods. Maybe cookware is a major contributor, but the truth is nobody knows yet.

Nor does this effect appear limited to liver cancer. The paper notes:

> Studies examining associations of PFAS exposure with risk of other cancers, such as kidney cancer, in the general population have found similar associations to those reported here. For example, in the only existing nested case-control study examining the prospective association between PFAS levels and risk of renal cell carcinoma, PFOS levels >50 μg/L were associated with more than two-fold increased risk of developing renal cell carcinoma (OR=2.51; 95% CI: 1.28-4.92), and similar associations were reported for PFOA and PFHxS [[52]]. These findings are notable due to the similarity in PFOS concentrations associated with risk of HCC in our study. ...

https://www.jhep-reports.eu/article/S2589-5559(22)00122-7/fu...

For its part, the paper never mentions the word "cookware" and is instead focused on the link between blood concentrations and cancer.

Edit: Wikipedia has the following paragraph on the topic of cookware:

> Despite DuPont's asserting that "cookware coated with DuPont Teflon non-stick coatings does not contain PFOA",[91] residual PFOA was also detected in finished PTFE products including PTFE cookware (4–75 parts per billion).[87] However, PFOA levels ranged from undetectable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid

Re: Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

#245

Post by MengerSponge »

elil17 wrote: post #236
exhilaration wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has changed now but, "For decades, most canned food manufacturers used can linings made of epoxy resin based on bisphenol A, or BPA, making food the primary route of our exposure to this toxic chemical." From here: https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/bpa-update-tracking-c...

BPA is still used widely. BPB is sometimes used as a substitute but it’s probably just as bad.

For people who care: thermopaper receipts are absolutely loaded with BPA. Cashiers have measurably higher serum BPA levels, because they touch them all day long.

I generally don't take or touch receipts if I can avoid it, but I don't treat them like they're radioactive. The dose makes the poison, and I haven't figured out how to completely eliminate them and still function in society.

Re: Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

#246

Post by purpleblue »

dymk wrote: post #215
jbotdev wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cast iron is also very heavy, and hard to clean if you get anything stuck to it. You can’t really soak or wash it with soap/water without re-seasoning it or it’ll rust. It has its upsides if you put in the work. I’ve given up and opted for mid-range non-stick (coated steel and/or copper, not anodized aluminum) or high end stainless.

Not being able to use soap is a myth, and re-seasoning a pan hardly ever needs to be done unless you're seeing bare metal. After a hard scrubbing, put it on the stovetop, drizzle a small amount of oil in there, and high heat for a minute. Push the oil around with a paper towel. Your pan won't rust. Use a metal scrubber and you probably don't need to use soap in the first place.

The idea of maintaining a seasoning on cast iron frying pans is too much of a pain in the ass. I wash it with soap and water and use olive oil or butter whenever I need to. The cognitive load is minimal and I don't have any usability issues.

Re: Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

#247

Post by stjohnswarts »

yuan43 wrote: post #244

There isn't a human alive today whose blood is free from PFOA and/or PFOS. The question to answer is what are the major routes by which this is happening. There is a lot of discussion in this thread about cookware. The problem is that these chemicals are now found throughout the environment and used in countless products. The stuff is found increasingly in drinking water and foods. Maybe cookware is a major contribut…

doseage makes the poison, no? has there been an explosion of liver cancer?

Re: Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

#248

Post by stjohnswarts »

elil17 wrote: post #2

The study didn’t actually find anything related to cookware. Modern Teflon in the US doesn’t expose people to PFOA/PFOS like old version did due to new regulations. The chemicals could also be entering peoples body’s through drinking water or bioaccumulation in meat or plants. You should throw away nonstick cookware from before 2013, but new nonstick cookware sold in the US does not have PFOA. I believe the EU follow…

I pointed this out on reddit and got downvoted all to hell lol. Thanks for taking one for the team. I love my hexclad set.

Re: Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

#249

Post by stjohnswarts »

idiotsecant wrote: post #240
acomjean wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been using carbon steel pan. Its like cast iron but much lighter (not light though). They look kinda narly, but you get used to it. You "season" from time to time (oil high heat) but we haven't in at least 6 months and use that thing at least 6 times a week. Easy to clean too. This article kinda give the details. (you have to dodge a modal and click "read more"...sorry) https://www.cooksillustrated.com/equipmen…

Carbon steel works great! The first time I used it I was kind of shocked that such a simple solution isn't the standard way it's done. Cast iron can be a little bit inconvenient due to the weight but carbon steel is literally no different from cooking in a teflon pan, you just clean it different.

cast iron is better at searing in my experience. I mostly use my hexclad for stuff that requires up to medium heat, but for searing and blackening stuff, nothing works like my cast iron skillet that I preheat in the oven to 450 for the sear.

Re: Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

#250

Post by stjohnswarts »

rayiner wrote: post #226
pmulard wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cook eggs on cast iron without them sticking, but it requires maintenance on the seasoning. The trick is to use some butter when cooking with eggs, and they slide right off. A quick wipe with a paper towel and the pan is clean (leaving butter residue helps keep it oiled for next time). Cast iron is a pain to clean if you burn food and the burnt pieces stick, but the investment into learning how to cook with it is w…

I do the same except I use ghee. My grandparents all lived to their 80s in Bangladesh and at this point I’m just trying to do what they did instead of trusting western science. (Aside from vaccines put the pitchforks away.)

butter, good tallow (non hydrogenated) and ghee are all fine. Neither is better than the other.
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