I am SO done with Teflon

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰 𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘁𝘆-𝗴𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘁𝘆:

𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗱 (𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲) 𝗿𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀:

𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗲𝗿-𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘁𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰:
-Dr. Graham Peaslee, Professor, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Notre Dame

MinuteFood is created by Kate Yoshida, Arcadi Garcia & Bill Mead, and produced by Neptune Studios LLC.

[MinuteFood]

If you ARE getting rid of a PFAS-coated pan, here's what the experts I spoke to suggested:
-Option 1 (best): find a metal recycling facility near you that will take it, or see if the company you bought the pan from has a mail-back recycling program.
-Option 2 (also fine): just toss it in the trash. While PFAS in landfills IS a problem, it's mostly unbound PFAS (like what's in industrial waste) that causes contamination; 99% of the PFAS in a pan is bound up in a polymeric form that basically *won't* break down, so it's unlikely to get into the nearby groundwater and cause problems.

[hongxu]

Please don't throw away your pans if they're still working well. Just make sure you're not buying new PFAS pans. That will quell demand while not wasting your perfectly functional cookware.

[Yentz]

It needs to be screamed and shouted that if we want to actually reduce PFAS in our enviroment and in our bodies it MUST come from government regulation. Putting the weight on the consumer is how we got into this mess in the first place, and is EXACTLY what companies want you to do. If you want to see change you need to vote.

[NunSuperior]

Ditched my non-sticks years ago and never regretted it. Cast iron and carbon steel pans last a lifetime. Multiple lifetimes actually. I have a good pan from the 1950's.

[DariusBaktash]

I've known PFAS as a problem for years, but the levels in the environment are much worse than we really understand day to day. Wife and I were looking for our first house and found suspiciously great prices near Aberdeen. Lo and behold, the upstream weapons testing facility has serious contamination issues that spread throughout the nearby waterways.

"Easy enough, we filter the water with reverse osmosis!" Not so fast... Individuals can do that (it works as advertised too), but it creates a whole new supply chain of production and waste that only adds to other problems and relocates that PFAS to landfills (disposal of filter membranes). Add to that more plastic and the chemicals necessary to make those filters (I wouldn't be surprised if some of that manufacturing requires PFAS coated products either)... And yeah, this just isn't a viable long term option. Eliminating PFAS from as much of the manufacturing world as possible is going to take massive changes.

Reduced consumer use will definitely help, not just for Teflon pans, but also any PFAS coated product. Hell, reusable pizza boxes may well need to become a thing (see cardboard recycling and grease on top of PFAS). But that's just the tip of the consumer iceberg. Making sure that municipal water supplies are clean and accessible to reduce the need for filtering and cleaning is a huge thing too.

I've come to love my carbon steel pan, but I'm on the lookout for more ways to change what's both in my home now and what comes in later.

[juancarrera]

I just bought a steel frying pan. Cheap and a joy to cook in. I’m in love! The care I put into the pan is part of the fun.

[ChemySh]

If youre not ready to switch to cast iron and steel pans due to the higher maintenance/price requirement (at least thats what I heard), consider fully ceramic /stone pans. A ceramic-coated pan (the inside is steel/some kinda iron) in my house only lasted 3 years before the coating started peeling off, but my fully ceramic pan lasted 10 years before showing signs of coating. If you're in Asia, the Korean ceramic is generally the best price-quality wise.

If you wanna jump into cast iron and steel, the no-soap tradition started because back then soap ingredients were more abrasive than current soaps. So you can actually safely take soap to your cast iron provided it's not soap from the cold war.

[thefurdrake]

Great video!

... except for the part about throwing away the pans now. Maybe that was a bit tongue in cheek? There wasn't a huge connection drawn between use of these pans and how much PFAS actually gets into your body (does the teflon being in a polymerized form have any effect on chronic exposure?).

Regardless, encouraging people to throw their pans away now and replace them may reduce demand for teflon, but it increases demand for other consumer products, which probably isn't good. Let the stuff wear out and replace it then.

[UdderlyEvelyn]

Very nice to hear that the coatings dying isn't horrifyingly dangerous, that's been spooking me for a while, especially with family who use metal on em sometimes and/or keep using really old pans.

[jeffsstuff]

Fine so perhaps the message isn’t to trash your pan but not to replace it with another. I eat a lot of eggs and that’s pretty much the only thing I use my nonstick pan for. When it’s old and worn I’ll get a carbon steel pan for eggs (my cast iron is far to large for this).

[TagetesAlkesta]

As a bird owner I’ve been done with Teflon for a while now and I don’t really ever miss it. Hard anodized aluminum, cast iron, carbon steel, and ceramic pans cover pretty much all of the bases for me at this point.

[thomasjunker]

I’ve got a couple of Teflon pans that are just about on their last legs… I was planning on swapping to carbon steel or cast iron as a replacement anyway, but this definitely helps to reinforce that

[hoeyinwong]

Minutefood; "Guys Teflons are bad!"
Also Minutefood; *draws the derpiest and cute looking molecules ever

[computergamer]

I am someone who has not used a single "non stick" pan. I've only ever used stainless steel or cast iron. And one cast iron pan I'm using at the moment was made in the late 1800s so like you said properly taken care of the can last basically forever.

[Techydad]

After we got Dewey the Parakeet, I stopped using our nonstick pans. The frying pan was easy, but finding baking pans that don't have a nonstick coating was harder.

Virtually EVERY metal baking pan has a nonstick coating. I finally settled on some silicone pans that have an embedded metal edge for stability. These work great and are nonstick without the toxic chemicals.

[mateuszw]

Telfon on pan... well, don't use if you have a pet bird
Telfon on garbage dump - silent killer

So what should I do in three easy steps

1. Dump my teflon pan to garbage dump
2. ???
3. Profit

And yes, I read pinned comment. And I am sure that on the garbage dump my teflon pan will lay forever and don't get even a scratch. Oh, wait...

[emagiannu]

I'm really sorry about your friends' birds. I felt that deeply.
Luckly most parrot owners know not to let your bird go anywhere near the kitchen while you're cooking, but if you go buy a small bird at the pet store, rarely they'll warn you about it.
Thank you for spreading awareness!

[jaimeeoww]

I like how she points out that environmental pfas comes from landfills and then proceeds to explain why we should “throw away” our pfas pans…. Also im fairly certain metal recycling facilities just throw the pfas pans in a crucible to melt them down… therefore burning the pfas into the atmosphere…

[missnaomi]

I came here straight from the Minute earth video. Scary, but informative! Y'all keep up the good work! ❤🙏

[demrandom]

For those that want a coating still but dont want teflon- check out enameled pans. Function like cast iron, dishwasher safe, less heavy then cast iron. It's basically a thin glass coating in the pan. The downsides of them are higher up front price (40 bucks for a new one generally), they retain heat less well then cast iron due to less weight, and if the coating is pierced you cant reseason it like cast iron. Otherwise works really well.