Simple mix of soap and solvent could help destroy ‘forever chemicals’
science.org
science.org
The "soap and solvent" is sodium hydroxide (lye) and DMSO at 120 degC. Those are... fairly... well behaved chemicals, but lye is stout stuff and DMSO attacks nitrile gloves.
You could imagine a remediation process that uses this process but the combo ain't exactly Dawn dish soap. I'd almost prefer pyroprocessing over it.
"DMSO can cause contaminants, toxins, and medicines to be absorbed through the skin, which may cause unexpected effects.
"Because DMSO easily penetrates the skin, substances dissolved in DMSO may be quickly absorbed. Glove selection is important when working with DMSO. Butyl rubber, fluoroelastomer, neoprene, or thick (15 mil / 0.4 mm) latex gloves are recommended. Nitrile gloves, which are very commonly used in chemical laboratories, may protect from brief contact but have been found to degrade rapidly with exposure to DMSO."
If we were looking for a chemical to deploy at scale to clean up PFAS in existing environments, we could do much worse.
In this incredibly dilute state, the previous mixture of molecules now spreads out and gets taken up by different tissues. The tissues that take up the compounds depends in the molecular properties of the compound in question, so something like PFAS which are highly lipophilic (iirc) meaning fat soluble, they will be taken up by cells pretty readily as they can easily cross the lipid bilayer membrane but will be stored in adipose tissue and continue impacting those cells and possibly be slowly released over time to impact the organism systemically. This of course will depend on initial dose concentration, duration of exposure, adioposity of the organism, along with a multitude of other factors.
The study of how compounds circulate in this way is a subfield of pharmacology known as Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, and Excretion (ADME)
Was thought for a while to have anti-inflammatory effects itself.
Ethanol works as an absorption enhancer too.
I once had a long-running (weeks) experiment that used DMSO as a solvent. Early on it was realized that the DMSO was degrading all non-glass rubbers and plastics in the chemical "circuit", which began to sag like an old TinkerToy structure. Had to rebuild/rerun with parts that were resistant to DMSO.
Unrelatedly, microwave assisted reactions in DMSO solvent wete found to have some totally gross failure modes that were a pain to clean up and got banned in the lab
Aka - won't kill you outright if you are just properly careful.
We're talking about fluorine chemistry here, so things get kind of extreme.
DMSO is used in pain relief in other countries (eg Mexico). It's also excellent for burns as it allows the body to repair a tiny amount of nerve damage or prevents it. Hard to say. This is demonstrable by burning yourself, I guess. My family and I have used it for burns for over 20 years. Granted, we don't get burned/encounter people who have been burned at home that often. I had a close friend with a rare disease (McCune Albright's Syndrome) who used it for pain relief, after I treated a burn she received.
It has been reported that it use has repaired massive nerve damage, which is probably coincidental. It is sold in healthfood stores in the US, but you want to dilute it 1/100 parts water. While it is primarily used as an industrial lubricant, on contact, it immediately travels through the skin to the nervous system. Most people get the strange reaction of the taste of oysters, when it's absorbed. There is a small percentage of people with various allergic reactions, like with many chemicals.
I would never mix it with soap, for any reason. It's like mixing shoe polish or granola with soap, you just end up with a mess of concerns.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19380203/
it was an expensive prescription med a few years back. I get dyspepsia from NSAIDs so I thought, "Could I make an ointment like that with ibuprofen?" and looked in the literature and found that ibuprofen is absorbed quickly with DMSO even more so than diclofenac. So I made a batch, but when I tried it I found I'd get dyspepsia very quickly after applying it to my skin so I guess the ibuprofen was being absorbed efficiently.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/fire-offshore-pemex-...
C3 photosynthetic plant life will end in about 600My.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the...
At ppt concentrations in seawater, it doesn't seem worth it. PFOS remediation is for contaminated soil or industrial wastewater.
He also used it on his wife. He told me that she had type I diabetes and neuropathy as a result. Her feet were always cold from poor circulation. That was true until he happened to rub her feet one day after treating a horse. Her feet warmed up in minutes and became normal pink again. After that, he used it on her feet and legs since it improved circulation.
You can say what you will about it being reactive and possibly not good for you but she was able to dance again and get back on her horse so it definitely does have some benefit. They did this for at least 30 years and both of them were past 75 years old when they passed away.
Like another poster said, it is used as a carrier for some medications since it pulls them straight into the bloodstream. I don't think it's magic but I also don't think you'll suffer much using it even with bare hands.
As far as lye is concerned, the sodium hydroxide in this paper, you can easily make that yourself with wood ash and water. It is pretty handy if you are tanning hides since the treatment of a raw hide with lye causes the hair to slip right off leaving a smooth skin ready for the next step.
Btw garlic consumption and subsequent breath is fairly common in many cultures for millennia due to its very positive health effects, just not among snobbish posh ones. There are plenty of solutions to bad odor, easiest being along the line of "if you can't beat them join them" - if you eat even just a bit of raw garlic, nobody smells bad to you anymore.
He had a long career as a wrangler for Hollywood westerns after setting several records himself as a young cowboy in rodeo events as a bronc-buster, calf roper, header/heeler even setting one record in a rodeo at Madison Square Garden. He participated in founding the American Quarter Horse Association. He told me he had trained several actors over the years including a couple from the old TV series Rawhide who had never ridden a horse before that show. He knew Gene Autry, Tom Mix, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and worked with them and other western movie stars at one time or another. He knew horses, mules, saddles and tack like the back of his hand and he understood cigars, whiskey, and women intimately as any real man did back then.
My wife uses Penetrex here at home for sore muscles. She claims to get some benefit from it. I was not aware that there were two compounds, DMSO and DMSO2 but we definitely have Penetrex here at home.
It is possible that the product he used back then was DMSO2 if it was widely used in the 60's through 80's in horse liniment. I actually had to look them up to get a feel for the differences between them.
Thanks for asking.
"...The relatively high freezing point of DMSO, 18.5 °C (65.3 °F), means that at, or just below, room temperature it is a solid."
, per Wikipedia.
I guess, it could be powdered before use. Though the whole application proposition hardly fits into a common household let alone kitchen.
Big if true. I'm slightly skeptical that just decarboxylating PFAS causes the rest of the backbone to "fall apart" - I would expect it to form CF3[CF2]· (carbon radical) which would readily react with water to form -H or -OH, which is basically back to square one. But maybe it can eliminate HF in the presence of UV, forming CF3[CH2]CF=CFOH, which gets hydrolyzed, oxidized, then cleaved, but boy is that an unfavorable process.
(edit: skimmed the paper, I was pretty close. Forms CF3[CF2]- which goes to CF3[CH2]CF=CF2 which then gets hydrolyzed, but...DMSO/NaOH at 80-120°C ...yikes. This is the ochem equivalent of "nuke the site from orbit", very few compounds survive these conditions)
I've been out of the chemistry game for a few years now so I'm a bit rusty but gut instinct is that this is far from a slam dunk. But anything to reduce FC's is a boon to the world, so I'm hopeful this is a breakthrough.
Edit2:
> This high fluoride recovery indicates that most of the perfluoroalkyl fluorines were defluorinated and mineralized rather than being transformed to smaller-chain PFAS or being lost as volatile fluorocarbons.
So the surprising thing isn't the decarboxylation, it's that NaOH encourages the perflourylalkenes to cleave at sites away from the alpha (splitting, rather than carbon-by-carbon), which is neat. Still doesn't touch PFOS, unfortunately.
The reaction can occur at more moderate temperatures. There is more analysis (with experimental results) further down in the paper:
> Substantial defluorination still occurred when the isolated PFOA degradation product (perfluoro-1H-heptane 2) was subjected to degradation conditions but heated to only 40°C (table S3).
As with everything, It very much depends on the concentration.
Company gets sued for using and hiding the danger of a compound they learned fairly quickly was toxic. Goes and invents another compound and switches to it without having to prove its safety. After it becoming public that they were intentionally hiding dangers for a half century, I feel we should take away their ability to be given the benefit of the doubt.
All I think they learn from these lawsuits is that they need to get better at identifying and removing people who will call them out on their bullshit.
Edit - I know the whole thing with DuPont was using PFOAs in the manufacturing process and leaking (intentionally dumping) them into the environment, but it's not like the final product (Teflon) is safe to ingest either, which as a cooking surface, you most definitely will in some quantity.
Sure it is. I don't think a less toxic material than Teflon even exists. It's toxicity is comparable to water.
The LD50 of Teflon is > 11,280 mg/kg. Water by comparison is 90,000 mg/kg. They were not able to measure the exact toxicity because it's impossible to eat so much.
PTFE goes out unchanged from how it was when it went in. It's completely inert. It's even used in implants, so has plenty of long term studies:
https://dermnetnz.org/topics/polytetrafluoroethylene-implant
https://www.facialplasticsurgerycharlotte.com/content/upload...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26110468/
How many studies are you looking for?
And I'm not sure I would really consider a "Go Ask Alice" column as peer-reviewed research.
It's not a rejection of all research to say that some questions remain unanswered. In fact, I'd say it is the foundation of good science to understand which claims are supported by evidence, and which claims are not.
I bet you can't find a study demonstrating natural selection in the split-leaf philodendron, either, but that isn't a good reason to go around saying "some questions remain unanswered" about whether the split-leaf philodendron is an exception to the laws of evolution.
> I bet you can't find a study demonstrating natural selection in the split-leaf philodendron, either, but that isn't a good reason to go around saying "some questions remain unanswered"
It absolutely is! The criterion for whether a question has been answered is whether that question has actually been asked, studied, and answered. In cases where there is no specific evidence, you attempt to make assumptions that extend existing evidence into spaces that it does not explicitly cover. But these aren't answers; they are educated guesses. Some guesses are better than others, and really the fundemental act of science is feeling out these hypotheses and deciding which ones are sturdy and which are shaky.
So for example consider the claim 'PTFE doesn't affect human health when ingested, because there is strong evidence that is safe in implants and is chemically inert in acids.' This claim relies on two assumptions in the absence of quality direct supporting evidence: (1) Safety in one biological context directly transfers to other biological contexts and (2) Chemically inert compounds cannot affect human health. There is mounting evidence against ~both~ of these assumptions, and so claims based on them should be treated with caution, and probably as warranting further study. This is no witch-hunt, this is simply using critical thinking and available evidence to gauge the validity of assumptions, and updating the validity of claims based on changes in the validity of underlying assumptions. This process ~is~ the scientific method.
> Nanometer-sized pores matter enormously, (...) but not in ways that make other forms of amorphous silica more toxic than silica gel.
Try replacing your morning cheerios with silica gel and let me know the results. The pores in silica gel are specifically interesting because they allow silica to readily form hydrates. The human body has a lot of water in it. There are absolutely health effects that depend on the physical shape of silica in addition to its chemistry compared to say, consuming an equal mass of fully dense quartz particles.
You'd probably have to eat a lot of silica gel to really feel the effects, but there are other more accessible and serious health concerns that are driven by nanometer or smaller physical effects. The reaction between diet coke and mentos is primarily physical, driven by nanometer-scale surface roughness on the candy. Proteins sometimes fold in abnormal shapes, and in the right circumstances, the presence of a chemically identical but differently-shaped protein can induce other proteins to change shape as well, leading to prion diseases such as Mad Cow and CJD, both of which can be acquired via ingestion of the trigger protein shapes.
The claim that nanometer-sized structural changes in a compound can have no effect on human health when ingested is demonstrably false. Obviously, this calls directly into question the dependent claim that chemically inert compounds can have no possible impact on human health when ingested.
Quartz is not amorphous silica, and unlike amorphous silica, it's carcinogenic if you inhale it.
You don't get nanometer-sized structural changes in teflon by scraping it off your skillet with a spatula. You're being ridiculous.
I'm interested to hear what response you get from biologists when you propose to them that natural selection might be inoperative in the split-leaf philodendron. I imagine they'll wish they had a PTFE cord handy.
Crystalline silica is still silica.
> You don't get nanometer-sized structural changes in teflon by scraping it off your skillet with a spatula. You're being ridiculous.
The words of someone who has not spent time analyzing electron microscopy of fracture surfaces :) It absolutely does without any possible shred of doubt. But that's not even the point; the point is that the fine physical structure of compounds can matter in biological systems. If you accept this, that it is plainly obvious that chemical inertness of a compounds is an obviously insufficent condition for safety.
> I'm interested to hear what response you get from biologists when you propose to them that natural selection might be inoperative in the split-leaf philodendron. I imagine they'll wish they had a PTFE cord handy.
If you spend a lot of time around people with science PhDs, you will quickly learn that most of us are keenly aware of how little we actually know and how much of it is guessing. Murdering people over disagreements is the domain of religions, not science. Sadly for many these two are interchangable.
Do you understand that when you eat PTFE it comes out exactly the same way it went in?
Even powerful acids can't do anything to PTFE, what makes you think the body can do anything to it?
I think that it isn't even close to being equivalent.
> Why you insisting it must be a digestion study
You are the one who made the statement: "It's about the most inert material that you can possibly ingest." so prove it, or admit that this is your opinion and not backed by research.
I'm not even asking for research comparing the effects of the ingestion of PTFE with every other "material that you could possibly ingest", just for any data, at all, on the long term effects of ingesting PTFE.
It's my understanding that the toxicity of ingested PTFE is still an open question, that there is no consensus on the safety or dangers of Teflon in food, and no research into the effects of ingesting it over/after long periods of time (say > 20 years).
If you have actual knowledge of advancements in the science I'd like to see what was found, but otherwise let's just acknowledge that there is still far too much work to be done before we can make meaningful claims about the safety of ingesting PTFE. At best, what we can say right now is that it won't instantly kill you, but the long term effects of ingesting PTFE on the body are unknown.
Are you planning on feeding people PTFE every couple hours?
> the long term effects of ingesting PTFE on the body are unknown.
They are known. They are non-existent.
You are arguing from bad faith and profound lack of knowledge of chemistry. To even hypothesize that PTFE can do anything, anything at all, to the body would require some new magical chemistry that doesn't exist.
There is nothing in the body, nothing, that can affect the stability of the chemical bonds that make up PTFE - if you had even a tiny bit of scientific understanding you know that, and not embarrass yourself with these demands for studies.
TiO2 also has a signficant body of evidence demonstrating that it is a carcinogen when inhaled in particulate form. Just because some compound is safe in one context does NOT mean it is safe in all contexts.
> Do you understand that when you eat PTFE it comes out exactly the same way it went in?
I bet if I asked you to eat shards of glass, they would leave your body pretty close to how they went in :) Whether your body would remain unchanged is another question. While this is an extreme example, there are more subtle ways a compound could interact with the body. For instance, glyphosate has long been considered a safe compound because it "leaves the body the way it comes in." However, recent research has revealed substantial evidence that glyphosate may adversely interact with the human microbiome, which is linked to many various health conditions. This is an active thrust of a lot of new medical research that wasn't strongly considered 20 years ago. It is simply not enough to say the compound remains unchanged, the real question is whether the body is unchanged, and the body is pretty complex and our understanding is very incomplete.
It's not clear which version of the scientific method you subscribe to from your posts, but in general proving a negative is ~really, really~ hard. This list of all possible interactions in the human body with arbitrary chemicals is quite long. The list of things that have been 'proven safe' only to be considered unsafe when studied more carefully is quite long. To suggest that our knowlegde of the safety of ~any~ compound is complete is impossible.
It would be pretty interesting if it turned out that TiO2 added to food as a white colorant were responsible for the obesity pandemic --- the epidemiological correlations are about right --- but so far the evidence that it has any kind of harmful effect at all is fairly weak.
Shards of glass are commonly used as a mild abrasive in toothpaste, an inert excipient in pill formulations, and a gas reducing agent in simethicone; they go by the name "amorphous silica" or "silica gel". They're also added to grains as an insecticide in the form of diatomaceous earth. It's commonly accepted by people who study this stuff that they are absolutely harmless to humans at that size.
I did mean TiO2. There is a reason the EU considers it a carcinogen and is banning it from several classes of products.
The EU has irrationally banned all sorts of things since the witch-burners have seized control of the government apparatus. Borate fire retardants and fertilizers is one of my favorite examples.
I'm not sure dismissing all research that disagrees with me as witch-burning would be a good habit as a scientist.
I'm not dismissing research that disagrees with me as witch-burning. I'm dismissing people who disagree with literally all the research.
Furthermore PTFE is know to interact with Gallic Acid [1] somewhat. The body contains gallic acid
I recall that large blobs of mercury was used as a homemade remedy for stomach issues which turned out to not be a great idea for obvious reasons, although it's LD50 would probably have been similarly high.
Also, Teflon out-gasses at temperatures well below your average stovetop flame. Toxic enough that you can't use Teflon cookware if you own birds. It'll kill them.
Citation needed.
The fumes are quite toxic. Toxic enough that you can't use Teflon cookware if you own birds.
The dose makes the poison.
That isn't true.
"Studies show that this coating contains a negligible amount of PFAS capable of migrating to food." https://www.fda.gov/food/chemical-contaminants-food/question...
> Toxic enough that you can't use Teflon cookware if you own birds. It'll kill them.
This also isn't true. You can't heat your cookware above 500F / 260C, that's it. Which obviously no one does since everything would be burned black.
Oil is much more dangerous to birds than Teflon, since it will kill them at temperatures actually reached during cooking.
On top of that, how much PFOA would you imagine is even in a frying pan? It's already so little it's considered negligible, so unless you are buying new ones every day, even the negligible amount is not "building up".
No it's not. You misunderstood what you read.
To kill birds you have to burn the Teflon, and the Teflon smoke kills them. And you have the get the pan HOT - way hotter than anyone cooks. Teflon is not easy to burn, you can put a blowtorch on it for a short time and not affect it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32515924 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32516579
People do badly burn their food and ruin their pans.
While I'm totally comfortable with eating teflon, I'm absentminded enough that I've overheated cookware many times, so I wouldn't use it if I had birds.
No one is even suggesting lethal toxicity is the issue here, so how is it relevant?
Bold of you to assume they didn't already have those other fallback options patented ahead of time
Is this based on insight or knowledge? Or simply wanting to bash Teflon (probably rightfully so)?
Same 3M contamination of groundwater happened in Belgium (Zwijndrecht plant) and the Netherlands (Dordrecht plant), with very little international coverage.
The fact that they refuse to get certified / conduct any independent rigorous testing (like in NSF/ANSI certification) should have clued you in.
"We also cut open a pair of Black Berkey filters to see how they are constructed and to look for evidence that, as Berkey marketing claims, they contain “at least” six different filtering elements. We found that though the Berkey filters are larger and denser than filters from Brita and 3M Filtrete, they appear to share their filtration mechanisms: activated charcoal impregnated with an ion-exchange resin. "
I wouldn't count on any of this to filter chemicals, much less PFAS.
We also have a Teflon milk pan but that is never used at a high tempriture so I’m less concerned about that.
Hopefully not in the bad ways? Is the "ceramic coating" proven to not be harmful?
And to answer your question, ceramics sometimes have heavy metals to get bright colors (cadmium mostly). Make sure to buy from a reputable manufacturer.
Where is that material?
I would prefer to study and perfect our manufacturing and use of Teflon if there is no alternative to it that is much safer.
> However, at temperatures above 500°F (260°C), Teflon coatings on nonstick cookware start to break down, releasing toxic chemicals into the air. [...] Polymer fume fever consists of temporary, flu-like symptoms such as chills, fever, headache, and body aches. The onset occurs after 4–10 hours of exposure, and the condition usually resolves within 12–48 hours.
[1] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/nonstick-cookware-safet...
Many ovens have their top temp at 550F. And when the broiler is on, it can go well above that (although in a smaller more focused area).
What evidence do you have for this claim?
So it is not accurate to say, "Ceramic itself is safe".
(I have no idea what is used in the surfaces of "ceramic" pans but it is unlikely to be any of the substances I listed above; they all have high surface energy.)
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/12/08/563808879/ca...
For an overview of "real" ceramic pans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G21f_ny_lxs
According to the EPA Teflon frying pans do not leech any PFOA into food, that's not where people are exposed.
I've noticed that for some reason a ton of people think they get exposure to PFOA from cookware, and that's simply not true. PFOA exposure mainly comes from waterproofing coatings, slippery coatings (like the bottom of skis), and firefighting foam.
Paper dishes (plates, straws, etc) are a big source of exposure because they need to make them waterproof. Make sure to ask for plastic.
https://www.teflon.com/en/consumers/teflon-coatings-cookware...
On top of that you have to heat the Teflon over 500F / 260C, and ovens temperatures don't go so high (except in self cleaning but a non-stick oven would not have self cleaning).
I suspect something else happened to your birds - probably simple smoke from food residue, which kills birds much easier than overheated Teflon does.
I don't know whether they're being intellectually dishonest, or genuinely don't realize they're spreading useless info.
They're claim that nobody gets a pan hot enough to degrade teflon while cooking is slightly more reasonable, except plenty of recipes start with "heat an empty, dry pan until it is searing hot" and that leaves a lot of room to screw up your pan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_fume_fever
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluoroisobutene
Although acutely toxic, this substance is not a persistent "forever chemical" because there are multiple mechanisms that rapidly degrade it in the environment:
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Perfluoroisobutyle...
> Perfluoroisobutene is quite toxic with an LCt = 880 mg⋅min⋅m−3 (mice).[1] It is a Schedule 2 substance of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
I don't know about you but I try and keep my ricin away from my breakfast foods. It is however reassuring that it'll be degraded in the environment.
To cause Teflon to degrade you have to heat the pan to over 500F / 260C.
No one cooks at those temperatures, even ovens don't go so high. You basically have to forget the pan on a high flame for a long time.
And the toxic chemicals you get from overheating oil are far worse, somehow everyone forgets about those.
And plenty of recipes are cooked at 450 degrees. I don't even believe there's a full-sized (i.e. not a toaster) oven that doesn't go to 500 degrees, but I'm willing to be corrected.
Still, I like cooking on teflon.
I’d say it’s pretty easy to get teflon to degrade at home.
So if you had been using oil with your pan the birds would have still died, and earlier than they did with the Teflon.
edit: I know for a fact that these birds smelled a lot of food cooking and lived. Teflon killed them in the next room.
edit2: I should really bow out of this discussion. The fact that Teflon.com thinks that Teflon is a special worry if you have birds is enough for me. Judging by the content of their page on the subject, I'm going to assume that they decided that comparisons to burning mystery oils were spurious.
When the product itself is actually publicly fessing up to being acutely toxic in some way, it’s a pretty safe bet it is.
There’s no reason to doubt the account here of the birds dying and this being the likely cause.
That said, pyrolysis of fluorinated compounds does release very toxic substances, HF among one of them. On the other hand, the tradeoff is that below those temperatures at which they start degrading, they are extremely inert.
How long ago was this? I'm guessing that the relevant knowledge maybe still isn't widespread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_fume_fever
Seems totally healthy to me!
They make some nice stainless and iron gear :) no joints either so nothing to break over time.
Darto makes decent carbon steel that won’t exactly break the bank :)
But both works well enough.
Still very little sticks if you use them enough.
(I'm a fan of teflon but I like cast iron even more.)
Think of it kind of like a barbecue surface (more accurately like a griddle), which people generally don’t soak in soapy water. I never do the “oil and then bake it” stuff, I don’t think it’s necessary.
I’m torn right now because I also just replaced my nonstick pants with a high quality $70 new nonstick pan, and then came across all these articles about PFAS. I usually only use nonstick for eggs and other delicate items but I’m paranoid now. I’m curious if anyone knows what percentage of exposure is via cookware compared to other environmental sources?
By subtle, I mean similar to the difference between veggie oil and olive or canola oil. These all have a distinct taste to me, and I dislike canola enough to notice when it's been used.
The egg by itself has flavors that get dominated by the oil flavors.
To some people it matters. Simple as that.
- heat it up so it's warm in the oven
- coat it generously with vegetable oil (it's what I had, but basically any oil will do)
- wipe the excess with a paper towel so it's still shiny but not runny
- put it in the oven for an hour just above the smoke point of the oil
(I'm not really a fan of cast iron, as they are too heavy for my liking and have too much thermal mass to react quickly to temperature changes)
If the coating turns white, recoat with oil and try a lower temperature or less time. Cast iron is an extremely old technology, and was common back in the days of wood stoves. It doesn’t require precision instruments to maintain it.
If you somehow ruin the seasoning, you can always scrape it with steel wool and try again. I once forgot a mini skillet in a frequentLy used propane grill for ~ 3 years, then left it outdoors with a burnt off coating for winter or two. I spent 5 minutes scrubbing rust off it in the sink, then oiled and seasoned it. We use it for sunny side up eggs these days.
Cast iron really doesn't require much maintenance. You can season it and never wash it and be delicate with it like a fancy chef, or you can abuse the hell out of it and it doesn't matter because it's basically indestructible. The only thing you can't do is let it sit in water or run it through the dishwasher. I mean, you can, but it rusts… which also isn't that difficult to clean if it happens.
Cast iron and a green scotchbrite pad or a stainless steel scouring pad and you are good. You can use hot water and soap to clean it. It will deteriorate any "seasoning" but so what. Clean after use, dry and store away. Takes maybe two minutes. If you want to get it seasoned so it has some non-stick to it you can, but you don't have to.
Much faster than scrubbing.
There are a few thing that are still a pain though, like eggs and fish.
They are great because you can get them really hot and they have excellent heat inertia. You can put them in the oven if needed. And cleanup is simple: just hot water & a brush. No chemicals. I've often got the pan clean and back in the cupboard while my protein is resting.
But if it's not protein that your cooking on your pan, but instead perhaps its an acidic sauce, then I would recommend a stainless steel pan for that.
For pots I would go with stainless also. Or copper if you can afford it.
Also geez flax seed oil for seasoning. It gives a near glass like finish.
The main caveat I've seen is when making acidic foods with iron cookware (cast iron or carbon steel) it may affect the taste ever so slightly as some of the acid is reacted and takes off the top layer so you end up with a "stain" that looks like the food. Still just cosmetic only though.
If you want to use metal cookware, go for cast iron (heavy) or carbon steel (light). There's a lot online about how to season or maintain them -- you can safely ignore all of this advice. These are pans you can abuse. They're not as nonstick as Teflon so you still want to use some cooking oil, but that's about it. Both kinds may rust if there's humidity, but that's fine -- just wash before (instead of after) cooking and a bit of leftover rust is just a tad extra iron in your diet ;)
An aluminum skillet from a restaurant supply store is cheap and low-maintenance. I use this one [0] for omelets and scrambled eggs, and it's probably my favorite pan. The thickness means that the heat is incredibly even, and there's enough mass that it won't cool down much when adding food to a preheated pan.
[0] https://www.foodservicedirect.com/alegacy-eagleware-the-poin...
Just get used to the imperfect surface, its not going to be perfect, it may get to be smooth and black one day, but even my nearly hundred year old skillet I've gotten through my family sometimes gets a scratch or a flake off. Its self correcting the more you use it.
If that's still too much "maintenance" try a nice enameled cast iron skillet or pot from le creuset. Don't cheap out. These are fantastic, aren't bothered by acidic foods, and still have the same nice heat holding properties of seasoned iron. Really love these. Don't use steel utensils or bang them around the edges with sticks and they last forever, or at least long enough you feel the cost was well worth it. My mother in law had hers, used, for nearly 25 years before the enamel flaked, and she didn't bother treating it nice (scrubbed, used metal utensils, etc).
You can effectively make stainless steel non-stick with correct use of a neutral oil and either cooking at a slightly lower heat and/or keeping the contents moving. Have to be ok with some oil though, for most foods it shouldn't be a problem.
It's not teflon, but I haven't come across anything that sticks to the pan in a consequential manner. Scrub with stainless steel scrubber to clean, done.
It should be obvious to anyone at this point that anything that promises to be a "healthy" alternative to teflon and is not stainless steel / cast-iron / carbon steel is most probably a scam.
I think the safest option is stainless steel, and funny enough, Teflon. They are both inert and Teflon is only toxic if you cook on high heat. I keep a Teflon around solely for scrambled eggs and fish on low heat, but they are very doable in a well oiled stainless fry pan as well.
A search across the last 6 months at HN - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal... - shows:
> Pollution: 'Forever chemicals' in rainwater exceed safe levels(https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62391069) 12 days ago
> Forever Chemicals PFAS, PFOA, PFOS, BPA, Explained Clearly [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QuvTjLZaXs) 2 months ago
> 3M’s PFAS Crisis Has Come to Europe(https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-3m-pfas-toxic-foreve...) 2 months ago
> EPA: 'Forever chemicals' pose risk even at low levels(https://apnews.com/article/science-climate-and-environment-g...) 2 months ago
> PFAS chemicals do not last forever [i.e. PFAS can be destroyed](https://phys.org/news/2022-05-pfas-chemicals.html) 3 months ago
> PFAS Linked to Liver Damage(https://www.studyfinds.org/forever-chemicals-liver-damage/) 4 months ago
> Regular blood donations can reduce “forever chemicals” in the bloodstream: study(https://theswaddle.com/regular-blood-donations-can-reduce-to...) 4 months ago
> Farewell, forever chemicals: Researchers aim to eliminate PFAS for good(https://phys.org/news/2022-03-farewell-chemicals-aim-pfas-go...) 5 months ago
> The farmers facing ruin in Maine’s ‘forever chemicals’ crisis(https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/22/i-dont-k...) 5 months ago
> Michigan beef found to contain dangerous levels of ‘forever chemicals’(https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/11/michigan...) 6 months ago
I live in france, I was at a relative this summer, and TV medias did not really talk about it. Same for newspapers it seems, but I'm not really sure.
As the article notes, we already had ways of breaking them down, just with difficultly: "current PFAS-destruction techniques, such as incineration, can require vast amounts of energy, superhigh temperatures, and millions of dollars".
Again, this...
Frankly doesn't surprise me, and I'm not blaming you for posting it but it just makes me want to crawl back into a cave and watch it all burn...
I'm all for "environmentally damaging" or someother name but "forever chemicals" is just a bad name for this that is going to get picked up on by people.
I'm not suggesting burn so much co2 that the planet gets to 120C, although it'd have less human problems at that point.
some serious HackerNews brain right there, just needs an app and I can get my bingo.
There aren't many chemicals that won't be destroyed in those conditions, the lye will just rip hydrogen off most molecules, but, it'll also do it to, you know, pretty much everything else too. You ever see a chemical burn before? Literally this, but imagine a solution of the lye that's hot to make it even more reactive...
Remove the contaminated material from nature first then return it. Cleaned.
I'm not saying we should dump more chemicals because of chemicals. This is a depressingly stupid conversation.
> Roughly 40% of PFAS compounds contain carboxylic acid groups, and thus could potentially be degraded by the new approach, Trang says. Though it has yet to be tested in the field, she adds that the most likely strategy would be to use conventional means to filter PFAS chemicals from, say drinking water, and then treat them off-site.
> The method doesn’t work on all types of PFAS, however. Compounds used in flame retardants and batteries, for example, contain a sulfonate group instead of a carboxylic acid group and won’t break down with this approach.