Some ovens are teflon coated, and some of those have cleaning modes that effectively kill of pet birds.
I don't get how that can even be allowed ad a regular household appliance.
I don't get how that can even be allowed ad a regular household appliance.
This isn't to say that we shouldn't ban PFAS. They're proven to be dangerous to humans, and we should absolutely be concerned about long-term effects. It's just that "it kills a bird" isn't a justification for banning something. I'm under the impression that burned food and smoke isn't great for you either; it's possible that the trade-off between a dirty oven and increased PFAS exposure is acceptable.
Ultimately it depends on the magnitude of the danger, and I don't know enough about airborne PFAS to know if it warrants a blanket ban on any products with Teflon.
Few people know this, but the thing in chocolate that kills dogs, theobromine, acts as a caffeine-like stimulant in human beings but with a much longer half-life. Although human livers are much more able to deal with it than dogs, this could conceivably be causing human problems in people who often eat a lot of chocolate less than seven hours before bed.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthine [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine
>I don't know enough about airborne PFAS to know if it warrants a blanket ban on any products with Teflon.
If you look at the CDC website, PFAS has a rap sheet a mile long. You should probably just clean your pans. If you can afford it, get a reverse osmosis system [3], they are very good at removing PFAS.
[2] https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/pfas/health-effects/index.html [3] https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/reducing-pfas-drinking-wa...
Well so will the actual caffeine.
Still, "not having the same effect on humans" is pretty misleading. It's maybe 4x more potent in a dog. Body weight is a much bigger factor. Not many people are going to eat "one ounce of milk chocolate per pound of body weight" or the equivalent dose of darker chocolate.
I am more or less immune to caffeine (in human concentrations), drinking all kind of coffees before going to bed (espresso, filtered, turkish, ...).
I noticed several times that it had the opposite effect (putting me to sleep). My brother has the same.
https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/xylitol-toxicity-in-d...
I wonder about this. Is this a benign side effect, or the body's way of moving a troublesome substance out of the digestive system?
It seems there have been some investigations in humans, but to be honest the effects seem largely similar to a lot of other legal substances. Alcohol is dangerous to pregnant women and infants, a fatty burger can raise cholesterol, etc.
That is a cause for concern, and I've conceded this in my original comment. However, it's not the strongest evidence for a blanket ban.
Or, alternatively, we could treat this as strong enough evidence of an effect and ban many other substances that we use every single day. I can think of plenty of foods that raise cholesterol, and I can certainly think of plenty that pregnant women aren't allowed to eat because of low birth weight fears or other complications.
I don't know, it killing lots of things with lungs seems like a red flag to me.
Perhaps it warrants switching the assumption "Teflon good (until proved harmful)" to "Teflon bad (until proven safe)".
I will say that we should be wary of banning products based on potential long-term effects with unknown magnitude. Knowing where to draw that line is tough.
Or many household appliances that can reliably kill of your pets at all.
So I don't really get this nitpick.
Some things kill animals and not humans. Some quantities of substances kill animals and not humans. Knowing that a product kills your bird is cause for investigation or concern, but not a reason for a blanket ban.
In absolute quantities it's less toxic than fructose, paracetamol or THC. It's among least toxic substances found in nature. Almost no one dies from acute toxicity of alcohol - almost all alcohol-related deaths are due to accidents and chronic toxicity (long term exposure to toxicant).
it seems unlikely that they have both teflon coat it and a self-cleaning mode (800+F) that burns it off?