Penguin 'Toxicologists' Find PFAS Chemicals in Remote Patagonia

Teflon is PTFE, which is fully fluorinated but is also very much a plastic: it’s a highly unreactive solid at reasonable temperatures (which sadly do not include temperatures commonly encountered on stoves).

By “the Teflon chemical” are you perhaps referring to the various nasty liquid, water-soluble surfactants commonly used in factories that make or process PTFE? Those include PFOA, PFOS, and the newer and not obviously any safer “GenX” compounds.

I wonder if there's a safe way to equip people to just do simple bloodletting if they have high exposure to PFAS. I mean obviously it's better to donate, even in that case, given the steady state of most blood banks. But it's still a bit of a pain in the ass.

Unfortunately, PFAS sticks around forever, so everywhere that the old firefighting foam was deployed (e.g. air force bases) still has high levels of PFAS contamination.

They aren't particularly similar.

Honestly, the way the two are conflated is quite annoying. You should be terrified of PFAS. You should be mildly worried about microplastics, mostly because there isn't enough research on the effects yet.

Regardless, the main thing about cast iron is to use it all the time. If you really, truly use cast iron all the time, it will never have food stick to it, you'll never need to "scrub" it. Hot water in the pan, let it sit for 10 seconds, scour with a normal dishes brush or whatever you use, put the pan on the stove, heat till there's no water, hit quickly with an oil spray. Notice i didn't mention soap. It takes EXACTLY the same amount of time as cleaning an older teflon pan, less the heating part. I just look at the heating as sterilization, and i don't worry about it.

I have 3 induction hobs, i switched to 100% cast iron and stainless cookware, and i'm happy. I just got tired of being upset about flakes/damage to my cookware from other people using it. MIL gave me a set of lodge she didn't want, plus i had 3 pans from ages ago that we re-seasoned and started using. Cast iron griddle, cast iron flat weight.

If my arthritis gets so bad i can't lift the pans at all, i might consider carbon steel or something, but i haven't used it yet. I'm better at cooking on cast iron than stainless, but i can make stainless work, too; it's just more hands-on than cast iron or teflon.

I've used peanut, rapeseed, olive, coconut, avocado oils; butter, bacon and other rendered fat. All work fine, although butter i'd put some other oil in with it. I only use avocado, peanut, olive, and bacon, in that order these days because of diet and other concerns.

I'm not into GLPs, but I could see a reasonable case made for supporting them. For most of the past 50K years, we either had to hunt, walk around, farm, split wood etc. which means burning 500+ calories daily. Now, most of us sit in offices 8 hours a day using 0 calories and 0 muscle, surrounded by calories.

It's not surprising really that the default in this situation is obesity.

Or stainless steel?

The ideal societal conditions for, say, a petrochemical company that is creating toxins that are genuinely "forever" for all intents and purposes, is a society where people are exhausted from their terrible job (or two jobs, or job + gig economy side hustle) and spend their leisure time glued to their phones, scrolling AI slop on instagram and gambling away their meagre savings on sports betting and prediction markets.

These are not people who are going to get educated about chemistry.

Scientific expertise is derided as elitism. The president lies constantly by issuing "truths" on his social media platform. Public education gets defunded and IQ scores are declining. Either this is just random societal decay, or this is serving the interests of the rich and powerful. I know where I stand on it. And yes, I'm cranky.

Jesus Christ.

Speaking of which, it occurs to me that my toothbrush is also made of plastic, and that most toothpastes are also mildly abrasive...

...which has absolutely nothing to do with the PFOA that you might reasonably be concerned about. Teflon is chemically inert. It's literally used for human body implants. Teflon-coated pans are not your enemy. Fire-fighting foam, on the other hand -- you probably shouldn't bathe in it.

Any test that "detects" teflon in the generic category of "PFAS" is a hopelessly flawed test [1]. Unfortunately, a great many of these papers don't make the distinction, whether intentionally or due to incompetence, or simply because it's far easier to do that, and it gets better headlines.

[1] Important aside: historically, several of the major manufacturers of teflon had problems with PFOA contamination around the factories due to manufacturing processes. This is unrelated to your personal use of a Teflon pan, and also, the process has been changed. If you want to argue that the new process is also polluting, fine, make that argument -- but don't assert that the use of the final product is itself unsafe.

I wouldn't overestimate the quality of this forum. It certainly has its uses, but I wouldn't overstate the quality of discourse here. It's not that great.