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Comment by genuinelydang | Hacker News Reader

Overheat your Teflon pan, take a good huff, wait a few hours and post that comment again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_fume_fever

”When PTFE is heated above 450 °C the pyrolysis products are different and inhalation may cause acute lung injury. Symptoms are flu-like (chills, headaches and fevers) with chest tightness and mild cough. Onset occurs about 4 to 8 hours after exposure to the pyrolysis products of PTFE.”

There is basically no safe limit for these chemicals — EPA limit for drinking water is 4 ppt. U.S. residents already have average blood PFAS levels to the tune of 4000 ppt.

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> wait a few hours

Indeed. When was the last time you left your nonstick pan sitting on a cooktop with nothing in it, for hours?

If you're the kind of person to leave empty pans burning for that long, I'd be more worried about cognitive decline and/or the risk you'll die in a fire of your own making.

Pretty much any heating element setting will take a pan to 450 degrees. Do people do it? - I doubt the parent commenter is lying about their bird.

Yeah, see...I just deleted the 450 degree part (right before I saw your response), because somehow I knew someone would pick at it.

The temperature is the least relevant part of what I wrote.

A pan left on the stove will turn red, and it is an accident that happens with some regularity. This issue is a lot like ground fault protectors: a rare accident that could be avoided by never interacting with a product in a certain way nonetheless occurs, and can only be eliminated through technical means. Just imagine that you're at your parent's house, and you look over at a glowing pan. Oops, you have a headache...

Just keep in mind gp is talking celcius. A good sear on a steak will happen around 200-250°c

Mistakes happen all the time. Cooktops have terrible user interfaces. People need to juggle multiple things at once, especially parents.

Furthermore, the quote above merely states that the pan has to reach a specific temp, not be out for hours.

You only have to huff it for a few seconds, and then turn off the heat. The symptoms are what shows up hours later.

how much of "it" is there? what is the concentration? dose makes the poison, not time.

These so-called perfluorochemicals are toxic to humans at single-digit parts per trillion.

If you live in the US, chances are your blood already contains these chemicals at 4,000 ppt or greater (four thousand parts per trillion is the nationwide average).

> These so-called perfluorochemicals are toxic to humans at single-digit parts per trillion.

No, they aren't. At least, not in the way you're interpreting the word "toxic".

> If you live in the US, chances are your blood already contains these chemicals at 4,000 ppt or greater

The fact that you're telling me that I'm currently thriving with 1000x the "toxic" dose you just quoted should tell you that at least one of the statements is exaggerated.

Again, there are people out there who will tell you that any exposure to certain chemicals is "toxic". These people are not worth listening to.

You are doing damage control for multinational chemical corporations. Why would you be worth listening to?

That isn't a response to your own crappy post, its a misdirection.

That level of intentional misunderstanding just confirms my suspicion of damage control efforts at play in this thread.

No, the onset of symptoms is several hours after exposure. There is no magic time per se of heating. Just get the pan hot enough.

Who is really heating teflon pans to 850 F on the stovetop?

Old folks, with a fine case of white matter decline. Distracted folks, because the baby just threw up. Sick folks, whose processing power is a bit covided. Young folks doing stupid things, possibly on a video dare.

To quote Chris Rock: if you're old and you die in an accident, you died of old age, not "that specific accident". If your mind's going, and that makes you do something that'll kill you, your mind going is what killed you.

And for distracted folks in the same example, it's what... The baby?

If a company knowingly uses a toxic chemical, it shouldn't be everybody else's fault they did that.

Tell me you haven't had a baby without telling me you haven't had a baby.

You are fucking 10x more aware of bullshit you're doing just to keep baby safe. Probably more like 100x, really. Nothing focusses your mind like having CREATED A HUMAN THAT MUST BE KEPT SAFE AT ALL COST.

I'm confused by your interest in shifting the discussion away from the company that has enough money and lawyers to know better, and back towards anyone but them.

Can't we discuss the company's responsibility?

Not without picking correct similes or metaphores, no.

Okay, if we must look at metaphors and not the thing you insist we must not look at:

> if you're old and you die in an accident, you died of old age, not "that specific accident"

Your metaphor absolves any drunk driver from murder charges as long as their victim is old enough.

... until you aren't. Plenty of dead babies to prove the point.

Sure we could make excuses for unsafe products.

Or we could recognize that lapses of judgement are something every human is capable of and demand such outrageous things that our cookware remains safe at any temperature a reasonable stovetop can produce. Really it shouldn't just be safe but also not break the cookware.

Teflon starts to degrade at 260 degrees Celsius / 500 F. That’s within steak searing temperatures.

I don't think a regular stovetop can get a pan to 450°C, my gas stove gets an empty pan to about 300°C maximum. It doesn't happen in normal situations, if it happens it probably means you forgot your pan on the stove. Heating Teflon at 300°C for several hours is bad, but personally, in that situation, I would worry more about causing a house fire.

Teflon flu is a thing, but it is relatively rare, especially considering how widespread Teflon pans are. That's a few hundred cases per year in the US, by comparison, there are about 1000x more house fire, with cooking equipment being a leading cause.

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