Tl;dr? How badly am I destroying my health by using a Teflon pan?
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 (only infants and toddlers), from migration into food prepared with PTFE-coated cookware, dermal exposure from wearing of treated clothes, from deposition of spray droplets on skin while impregnating, from skin contact with treated carpet and with upholstery, and from deposition of dust on skin.
Detailed analysis of these pathways showed that none of them causes significant exposure to PFOS or PFOA under the assumption of reasonable conditions during exposure, that is, the contribution of each pathway to the total uptake dose is less than 1% in any of the scenarios.
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?
You will create dangerous compounds though if your pan goes over high temperature. This could happen if for example there is no oil in the pan. I have seen housewives and cookers heat the Teflon pan without oil for evaporating the water. Big no no with Teflon.
I have seen metal scrappers burning teflon pans to use the pan for something else and painting it!(with teflon you can't paint it)
The big problems with exotic chemicals is that people could do extremely stupid stuff without them realizing they had done anything wrong.
It is not like red alarms will start ringing or something. It is just silent, and two years later you will have cancer.
Oops... I regularly do this. Same question as previously.
You can use an oven thermocouple to measure the temp of your pan as you heat it without oil. If you do it once,and compare with the temps that are dangerous(you could see it on Internet) you will never do it again, as you will realize how fast temp goes up and how easy is to manufacture C8 with your pan.
Water acts as a limit of temperature, when it is wet it can't go higher than 100 Celsius(locally, it can in the parts of the pan that are dry). But once all water is gone, it goes hot incredibly fast. Oil does the same but with higher temperature than water, with way higher boiling pressure.
If someone does this mistake in one of my Teflon pans, I just throw it away. I never trust pans that are not mine.
Obviously, when you see smoke in the oil it is not good either.
By the way most of my pans are ceramic or cast iron.
Exactly. The important takeaway here is that teflon becomes toxic only after the smoke point of the oil. i.e. oil is more toxic at high temperature.
So putting in the oil doesn't protect you from toxic fumes since you get those from the oil, but rather it gives a visible signal (smoke), that you could quickly turn off the heat because you are about to damage your pan. But as far as toxic fumes go it's too late - you already had those from the oil.
Heating teflon to extreme temperatures will make it smoke, but it's way hotter than the smoke point of oil.
i.e. it's a far far higher temperature than anyone cooks at. (Maybe some specialized cooking methods, but they'd have to be without oil.)
If you did the same thing with oil, the oil would smoke and be far more toxic than the teflon.
i.e. teflon is safer than oil.
If you are not heating the pan beyond the smoke point of the oil you have nothing to worry about.