PFAS “Forever Chemicals” and Nordic Ski Wax

My North Face gear is just as nice as my Marmot gear, both of which are slightly higher in quality than the REI-brand gear. None of them are as good as my Arcteryx jacket, but for the price of that one jacket I could buy a jacket, midlayer, base layer, rain shell, and hiking pants from any or all of the first 3 brands.

The fact that cookware makers aren't overly concerned with temperature warnings should tell you something about the health risk here. There is little liability risk to them because apparently there is no demonstrable health risk. At the risk of repeating myself endlessly:

> read up on fluorinated polymer fume exposure, you'll find exactly zero known deaths, only a handful of known injuries, and no firm evidence of long term health effects.

If you can find any evidence of negative health impacts from nonstick cookware, there are thousands of ambulance-chasing personal injury lawyers who would love to see your work.

FWIW, William-Sonoma says theirs do too: https://blog.williams-sonoma.com/is-nonstick-safe/

I’d bet most people don’t read the directions for their pan, and if they do, they’re probably not measuring the temperature of their pan during use. They’re probably just trying not to burn their butter or smoke their oil, which happens around 200c anyway.

And you might have another reason to worry about that food fried at 200c+: many foods cooked at high temperatures themselves form carcinogenic substances.

> I raise exotic birds and have heard that fumes from Teflon will them. Is this true?

> We have heard of this before. In the Scanpan manufacturing process, the non-stick compound is actually embedded into the material that makes up the cooking surface, unlike cheaper cookware where the Teflon coats the Aluminum base. The only way that fumes will be released from this material will be if the non-stick compound actually breaks down from excessive heat. (e.g. the pan is left empty on full flame for extended periods). If used within its normal operational boundaries, no damage should result. Obviously we cannot warrant that no damage will arise but have no reported cases of this happening. In fact since 2007, Scanpan GreenTEK is made with no PFOA, the primary harmful components for exotic birds. Once should be aware that the fumes from burning margarine are more intense than that from cookware and may cause more damage to exotic birds.

The part about PFOA being the primary harmful component for birds is utter bullshit. But the bit about margarine is interesting.