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.
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.
The temperature is the least relevant part of what I wrote.
Furthermore, the quote above merely states that the pan has to reach a specific temp, not be out for hours.
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).
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.
If a company knowingly uses a toxic chemical, it shouldn't be everybody else's fault they did that.
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.
Can't we discuss the company's responsibility?
> 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.
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 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.
(1) https://www.buffalobirdnerd.com/storage/app/media/Teflon.pdf
Worst case scenario here is people throw out their relatively harmless spatulas and buy new ones. Big whoop.
I won't deny that many such academics exist. And yet...
The numerous successful academics at reputable universities that I know (including me) are uniformly mortified when our names are associated with mistaken interpretations in the press. Some of us (including me) simply stop doing press interviews because it happens so often.
If you want to find an incentive to get undeserved attention, I recommend you look at economic incentives within the press itself. Too much time pressure, not enough training, desperate need to gather attention to sell ads. All the opposite of the academic world.
Absolutely! You're one of the good ones! I just wish you were in the majority. :-(
Edit: that's unfair. I don't know if you're in the majority or minority. I want to believe that most academics are still just silently plugging away and doing good work. It just really feels like things have shifted to the huckster side of the spectrum, and/or that is what is rewarded.
That said, I grant your broader point about selection bias.
I think social media - such as HN comments that shoot down almost every OP without fail - is by far the best example? Most comments on social media on such things seek attention for being smarter-than-though and have no basis in anything, including the comment at the top of this thread by 'gidmkhealthnerd'.
> All the opposite of the academic world.
The pure academic world and the evil Media! If you're an academic, maybe we can something better than joining the mob against the bogeyman.
If the OP can't handle criticism it's hard to argue that the attention is deserved
But you should also consider that only one or a few people championing for change is how safty has historically improved. We have had too many cases of industries knowingly poisinging people for profits while funding studies that say everything is fine and marginalizing the few reasearches who have morals and don't just go after the biggest profits to discard concerns like this just because there is only one person championing them.
Setting aside the fact that the purported harms (if specified at all!) are nearly always based on confounded observational studies and/or animal models at doses that may not bear any relationship to the doses you're being exposed to in real life, the claims for any particular item are usually presented out of context. For example, is exposure at X<10 parts per billion compound Y meaningful, as a human who lives in the real world? Typically, nobody knows, but you can nearly always find an "expert" who will confidently claim that any exposure is "dangerous."
Skepticism and awareness of risk magnitude is essential when reading stuff like this. Academics who specialize in obscure areas love to get their name in the press, and the easiest way to do that is to go to a reporter and make vague and irresponsible claims about risks to human health, even if those risks are very, very small. [1]
For what it's worth, I have a Teflon pan, I've used black plastic spatulas in the past, and I'm not worried about it. Compared to the reasons I already know that I'm likely to die, these things are irrelevant.
[1] Case in point: I knew a tenured professor at a prestigious university who was absolutely convinced that if we all continued to eat beef, we'd be looking at an epidemic of vCJK (aka Mad Cow Disease). Saw a lecture from this person on the subject over a decade ago now, where the risks were presented as looming and absolute. We're still eating beef. Guess what hasn't happened since then?