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Comment by culi | Hacker News Reader

There's an endless stream of non-stick pans in Goodwills. I feel bad for the people that don't know better and buy used non-stick pans and I also feed bad about the sheer amount of waste being generated. It would be incredible if this could be used to get rid of scratched up or otherwise unsafe non-stick coatings to the point that the pan is still food safe

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EDIT 2: I think they are non-toxic and inert. But I tried to find my source for this and I am failing badly. so deleting this comment

EDIT: I agree they are very waste full since they do not live that long. I have owned three non-stick pans, my cast iron pans have outlived all of them by decades.

Non-stick pans are fine if they are never heated above 500°F (260°C) and never scratched. In general, you probably shouldn't regularly use a nonstick pan for longer than 2 years.

If it is scratched or heated above what it says on the label, then yes it is absolutely toxic.

Why is scratched a problem? They use the same stuff in medical implants. It is chemically inert if you don't overheat it right?

PTFE is very inert, but that doesn't mean that I want to eat more of it than I have to. And as a practical matter: Once it begins flaking off, more tends to follow. I don't know if that's because of oxidation of the aluminum, or what, but it sure seems to behave that way.

I mean, I'm not too awful worried about it compared to my adventures in 3D printing (with its crusty PTFE Bowden tubes).

But I very deliberately have just exactly one Teflon-coated pan in my house, and it only gets used for exactly one purpose: Making scrambled eggs with a rubber spatula. (I like my eggs scrambled sometimes, and I'm not pro-enough to make it work with cast iron or stainless cookware.)

We got one of the greenpans for eggs after the last ptfe one chipped. It is ceramic glass coating of some sort. About halfway between ptfe and mirror stainless for sticking. Better than that if you keep the temp low. Kinda pricey though.

I've looked at those and they do seem nice.

This one was very cheap, at Aldi; if it dies, it dies. I try to avoid spending too much money on cookware because whenever I live with other people, the tendency is for them to find some way to absolutely destroy it.

And by that, I mean like: I don't even know what temperature it is that copper gets drippy-melty at, but they managed to exceed it.

Isn't that the problem? From what I am googling right now, the maximum tempreature of my stove is absolutely above the threshold where it stops being chemically inert. If we were talking about some usage that didn't involve heating, then I guess maybe I'd hear out a usage for it, but even then, not sure the benefits are worth having something that can't degrade and yet can potentially get ingested by my body.

A single scratch on a pan is enough to release thousands to millions of PTFE particles and microplastic particles. Scratched pans also significantly lowers the PFAS thermal stability which means even low temperatures can be overheating

And if the scratch is deep enough, you could also be exposing the underlying fluoropolymer coating which contains chemical binding glues which are definitely not foodsafe

Also modern replacements like GenX and PFOA are dangerous because they are not inert

... or just avoid the risk entirely.

I'd love to know more. I'm sure that I've scratched and overheated every pan I own.

PFAS (which is what makes nonstick nonstick) have tentative links to several cancers [1]

[1] https://dceg.cancer.gov/research/what-we-study/pfas

It's worth noting that all "forever chemicals" have major health concerns. PFAS, as a class, is the one most studied. They have been explicitly banned in many countries (e.g. France and Sweden) and even some US states (Maine, Minnesota, etc).

But it's a bit like how the DEA has to update their list of banned substances multiple times a month because people keep coming up with new designer drugs and "research chemicals" that aren't technically banned.

I think a broader umbrella term might be POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants) though that might also be too broad to be useful. A lot of times it's their non-stick properties themselves that make them so toxic, especially to fish and smaller organisms.

PTFE is perfectly safe as long as you don’t get it too hot. So, not the best material for non-stick pans.

The thread tape on all non-compression screw-type plumbing fittings is made of PTFE, and so is Gore-Tex.

I’m well aware of the danger of PFAS, my local watershed is contaminated with it from a 3M plant.

You can use pipe dope instead of PTFE if you want. It's just more expensive.

Most pipe dope is made with PTFE now.

Old school teflon is inert at low temperatures but when you scratch it, it's thermal stability is drastically lowered. Even low temperatures can be dangerous.

Also most pans nowadays have phased that out and use PFOA or GenX which are absolutely not inert.

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