PFOA was phased out in US and EU AFAIK, but was for a long time used for making PTFE while contaminating water supplies and drinking water. There were many lawsuits in the USA, see links at end. But note that there are many more potentially dangerous PFAS chemicals that are still used in EU and USA (see links).
Also, the PTFE molecule is not a hydrocarbon like most-plastics, it's a fluorocarbon; so you didn't really give a good argument against the idea that people may regret producing a lot of PTFE.
Some links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...
https://theintercept.com/collections/bad-chemistry/
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/10/pfos-pfoa-epa-chemical-c...
https://theintercept.com/2018/07/31/3m-pfas-minnesota-pfoa-p...
This kind of thing has happened before. If we (USA) hadn't stopped rolling out nuclear in the 80s, we'd be off coal/gas by now, instead of maybe several decades from now after pumping ungodly amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Anti-vax and anti-fluoride need no introduction. Agrotech probably receives the most hate per unit of actual sin -- it's an odd week that I don't hear someone patting themselves on the back for choosing a product that is almost certain to be worse for the environment because an upscale vendor successfully applied misleading differentiation tactics to convince them of the opposite.
Indiscriminately attacking progress and throwing the baby out with the bathwater has become a national passtime that shows every indication of getting worse before it gets better. Teflon seems to be another instance of this trend.
Sure, it's toxic to parrots, if you burn the material and it decomposes. But how many materials aren't? Most plastic will produce highly toxic products when burned.
PTFE is produced from tetra-fluoroethylene, which is a gas, doesn't get into water supplies.
And PTFE is very non-toxic. That's why we use it in medical implants.