Hacker News Reader

Comment by culturestate | Hacker News Reader

> eat scraps of Teflon from my pan

I’m sure there’s a doctor or a chemist in here who can correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve always understood Teflon to be super-duper-ultra inert. They literally make arterial grafts out of Teflon.

View on HN

Doctor-chemist here. You are correct. The carbon-fluorine bond is very inert to metabolism. Ingested Teflon would be almost entirely eliminated unchanged.

Takes pretty harsh conditions to break Teflon, but interestingly it can react with explosive violence, as I have witnessed, when combined with small particle sized Mg.

Why all the recent fuss about ingesting PFAS and “forever chemicals” then? I thought Teflon is a kind of PFAS?

PFAS afaik are used in the process of making teflon pans, namely in getting the teflon to stay attached to the pan's metal itself.

Heavy metals and other toxins bind to inert materials and enter/stay in the body when introduced by PFAS and microplastics

> Birds are susceptible to a respiratory condition called "teflon toxicity" or "PTFE poisoning/toxicosis." Deaths can result from this condition, which is due to the noxious fumes emitted from overheated cookware coated with polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE).

Sure, but burning Teflon and inhaling the fumes is much different from eating pieces of Teflon that flake off in your pan. Plenty of otherwise-harmless things are suddenly not harmless when you burn and inhale them.

I think it is but I believe the rub is related to cooking temp. You're not supposed to heat it above x (400F? not sure) and it breaks down beyond that.

I think it is the glue or chemicals used to bind teflon is the issue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com