Whenever this topic of Glide being toxic comes up they cite this article :
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/dental-fl...
Which is written based off this study:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-018-0109-y
Which is based off blood samples drawn in 2010-2013, which is at the time PFOA was being phased out of the PTFE production process due to lawsuits around the PFOA toxicity, which DuPont was aware of. The new process using GenX (seriously), which is known to cause problems too but at a lesser extreme than PFOA. However the issue with PTFE was with the residuals of PFOA which you don’t find in commercial PTFE for GenX.
And yes, PTFE is widely used in medical implants and devices.
Non-reactive also means doesn’t interact chemically with other chemicals, which is a desirable thing in a plastic that might be ingested. While maybe not awesome that it sits in silt not reacting to the end of time, if it also doesn’t react with anything in your body, it’s safe to take into your body, no?
The problem with some PFAS is they don’t readily degrade but they’re biologically reactive and interact with the bodies chemistry. That’s not a great feature. But it’s a huge class of chemicals, all of which are chemicals stable due to their carbon fluorine bonds - one of the most stable bonds in nature. But that doesn’t mean they can’t react in ways that don’t break the molecule apart, or form other chemicals that maintain the integrity of the C-F bond.
But it also doesn’t mean that they DO react.
Life isn’t so simple it can be reduced to a mantra like “plastic bad” or whatever. PTFE has a lot of very useful characteristics, and its lack of reactivity in the body isn’t the least of them.