Saturday, December 22, 2007

Teflon pans

Here's an excerpt from an article from the San Francisco Chronicle on the use of teflon pans. This is absolutely hilarious. I gleaned the important information that I could from the piece, but I also highly criticize it. Imagine that.

The Sticking Point
Nonstick pans are a boon to cooks, but are there dangers lurking beneath the surface?
David Rubien, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Cooks who appreciate the almost-magical properties of nonstick frying pans will be happy to know that the products have gotten a lot more durable. Unfortunately, so has the controversy surrounding the chemical behind the nonstick magic. (Do I smell an anti-corporate bias coming?)

Pots and pans coated with Teflon -- or any of the surfaces analogous to Teflon -- are immensely popular. U.S. consumers spent roughly $1.2 billion on 159 million pots and pans last year, 60 percent of which were nonstick, according to figures from the Cookware Manufacturers Association.

"Nonstick has revolutionized America's cooking habits over the past generation by letting consumers cook with much less oil and grease and by easing the cleanup chores associated with cooking," says Hugh Rushing, vice president of the association. "Nonstick cookware is now mainstream for the majority of U.S. consumers. It's found on high-end cookware as well as medium- and low-priced product."

Decent nonstick frying pans made by companies like T-Fal, Faberware and Revere are widely available in models ranging from $10 to $30. Yet scientific studies, not to mention lawsuits (see story, F4), suggest that there's another kind of price associated with nonstick: The pans may be bad for you. They can give off potentially harmful fumes at medium to high temperatures, and a chemical crucial to the manufacture of nonstick surfaces -- but not found in the finished surfaces -- is prevalent in the environment, including most Americans' blood. (BINGO!)

"We recommend that people phase out the use of Teflon cookware in their home," says Lauren Sucher of the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D. C., organization that compiles data on toxicology. (Okay, so we use the teflon to avoid the grease and oil on traditional pans which is unhealthy, so if we go back to them, we go back to the harmful oils. Then your organization will say we're using too many oils again. Do you see this trickery?)

Teflon is a registered trademark of the DuPont Co., which has been making Teflon cookware and other products for more than 40 years. The company says nonstick pans are completely safe if used according to manufacturers' instructions, and that emissions from DuPont factories have virtually ceased. (I've never gotten sick from using teflon, and I have my blood tested regularly at a holistic health center.)

"Believe me, you get more toxic fumes from the food you're cooking than from the pans themselves," says Dave Boothe, strategic planning manager for fluoropolymer solutions at DuPont. (Yeah, especially when you think about all those pesticides in our food. Agreed!)

The dominance of nonstick is not surprising, particularly now that the pans don't flake and divot like earlier generations of pans, many of which can still be found cluttering the cabinets of America's kitchens. If the average nonstick frying pan from 20 years ago is like a whitewashed shack, today's pans are akin to modern condos with deluxe paint jobs. Paint is often the simile used to discuss the making of nonstick pans, because the nonstick material is essentially painted onto the surface of the pan.

Although the technology has improved dramatically, the essential nonstick ingredient is the same as it was when a DuPont Co. chemist discovered it in 1938. The waxy substance he scraped out of a freon cylinder turned out to be the most slippery substance in the world. Called polytetrafluorethylene, or PTFE, it consists of a chain of carbon atoms that are surrounded by fluorine atoms. Dupont began manufacturing PTFE, trademarking it Teflon.

In 1954, a French inventor figured out a way to bond Teflon to frying pans, and formed a company called Tefal, which evolved into T-Fal, a giant manufacturer of pans and other household appliances. The early nonstick pans didn't hold up very well, however; they began flaking within months. So Dupont and the few other companies that also make PTFE coatings began experimenting with additives to make PTFE stronger.

About 15 years ago, PTFE compounds improved dramatically. Nonstick coatings now are enhanced with powders made out of ceramic, stainless steel or titanium, and the coatings are applied much more thickly, as well. The pans to which the surfaces are attached also are much better, basically a function of bonding different materials to aluminum, which is the best surface for nonstick, though soft in its natural state.

"Reinforced nonsticks are resistant to scratching, many invite the use of metal tools, and their useful life has increased to years of daily use," Rushing says. "Nonstick's ability to remain slippery over time has increased enormously in recent years."

One of the reasons those old Teflon pans would flake and chip is that utensils would dent the aluminum, thus undermining what the Teflon was trying to hold onto. (Yes, I have had older pans that did this.)

Nowadays, aluminum gets anodized, an electro-chemical beefing-up process that makes the metal nonporous, nonreactive and harder than stainless steel. The anodized metal retains the natural superior heat conductivity of aluminum. Today's pans can also be varying combinations of materials like aluminum, stainless steel and copper to try to get the best of heat conductivity, weight, look and cooking effectiveness. (Forgive me if I'm wrong, but didn't space exploration help contribute to this advancement?)
As for how food turns out when cooked in nonstick pans versus conventional pans, that's a subjective matter. The Chronicle's own test of some nonstick pans provides some illumination, as do the opinions of some professional chefs (see accompanying stories).

Experienced chefs who use nonstick pans know that they are good for certain things, like making crepes, but not for other things, like searing meat. But the same could be said for other pans -- for example, cast iron isn't good for cooking anything acidic, nor would you want to grill a kielbasa in a wok. For some cooks, using nonstick -- or not -- boils down to picking the right tool for the job.

Still other cooks may avoid Teflon altogether because of safety concerns. A letter to Dear Abby that ran in The Chronicle on May 7 from a distraught "Bob in Atlanta," was a cautionary tale about a beloved 26-year-old Amazon parrot who died from exposure to fumes emitted by a burned Teflon pan. (Notice the word "burned.")

Bob's parrot perished from a syndrome known as Teflon toxicosis, which results from overheated PTFE-coated pans and has been recognized for decades. That's why instructions packaged with nonstick cookware say that pans should never be left empty over a flame. Birds have extremely sensitive respiratory systems. (Okay, so why was the pan overheated? Did the bird whip it out and do it? No, it must have been Bob, or someone Bob knows. So where is the personal responsibility being placed on Bob? Hmm..I don't see any. Looks like the SF Chronicle is implying that it's all Teflon's fault. That's right. Take out any personal responsibility for anything. Now, let's say that Bob had purchased tainted pet food from his vet that came from China and the pet died, just like the recent events in the news. He'd have every right to sue the manufacturer of that pet food for not regulating what goes into their food processes, but this appears to be a case of pure negligence and not the fault of Teflon. Ridiculous, I say.)

DuPont says that off-gassing from nonstick pans does not occur until the pans are heated to over 400 degrees, in which case, at worst, fumes can lead to brief flulike symptoms in humans, called polymer fume fever. DuPont scientists point out that birds can die from many different types of fumes, including those produced by burning onions or butter. (Good point. Another reason that people should carefully consider the choice of a parrot as a pet/companion. But that's not the point of this article.)

"Anything that's degraded thermally, whether it's food, wood or plastic, will give off toxic gases," says DuPont's Boothe.

(So....don't let your parrot close to the teflon and don't heat your pan over 400 degrees! Sheesh!)

The Environmental Working Group has collected data from several industry, government and academic studies that have been done on off-gassing of PTFE- coated pans heated to various temperatures. The tests revealed that more than a dozen types of potentially toxic particulates -- including hexafluoropropene, hydrogen fluoride and difluoroacetic acid -- are released. But whether the fumes occur in enough quantity to harm humans has not been determined.

NICE.

(Okay, so what was the message at the beginning of this article again? Hmm..let's see....

"We recommend that people phase out the use of Teflon cookware in their home," says Lauren Sucher of the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D. C., organization that compiles data on toxicology.)
The same group that says it has not been determined how much of the fumes are harmful to humans? It seems a little premature to go out and recommend that people stop using teflon pans then, doesn't it?


"DuPont says that gasses aren't released in normal use, but academic and peer-reviewed studies show that pans get hot enough to release toxic gases at normal cooking temperatures," Sucher says. But pan fumes are nothing compared to the heat DuPont has gotten over environmental contamination (see story, above). (Uh, see no responsibility placed on Bob, above.) It's not clear whether health and safety considerations have any effect on sales of nonstick cookware.

Well all you have to do is go into the major stores, look at what's on the shelves and see what's selling. That should give one, I would think, a somewhat clear view of the effect of safety considerations on sales of nonstick cookware. Also, there are product reviews everywhere on amazon.com and other sites. This sounds like another drummed up wishful thinking statement from the left to steer consumers away from something that doesn't agree with their set of idealogues.
"(PFOA) has been used to manufacture millions -- probably billions -- of pans, and we don't see evidence that anyone is injured by their use," says Boothe. "That's a pretty good safety record."



I'll let that last paragraph speak for itself.

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