NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC – Linda Birnbaum used to have a set of nonstick pans. Not anymore. She got rid of them.
Why? Because Birnbaum—former director of the U.S. government’s National Institute of Environmental Health Science—became increasingly uncomfortable with an essential fact about that oh-so-easy-to-clean cookware:
It’s very often made with PFAS, per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, used to treat an array of products to make them resistant to heat, oil, stains, grease and water.
PFAS also belong to the set of human-made compounds known as “forever chemicals” that can linger endlessly in the environment and human body, sometimes with toxic effects.
They can be found everywhere—on the receipts from your drugstore, on your stain-resistant couch, in firefighting foams, in the water supply and, yes, in your kitchen.
PFAS and another forever chemical, BPA, have increasingly been the focus of concern among researchers and consumers in recent years.
PFAS are a “huge family of chemicals,” says Tasha Stoiber, senior scientist for the Environmental Working Group.
How huge? Nobody seems to know—estimates range as high as 15,000 different compounds or more. Each contains a fluorine-carbon bond “that gives them unique properties of being stain-resistant, grease-resistant, water-resistant,” Stoiber says.
Bisphenol-A comes from an entirely different class of chemicals, used to make hard polycarbonate plastics. The chemical is also found in protective linings of food cans—including soda cans—as well as dental sealants, plastic toys, and other products.
Like PFAS, the CDC says the health effects of BPA are “unknown,” though it adds that the chemical “has been shown to affect the reproductive systems of laboratory animals.”
“It’s basically an environmental estrogen,” says EWG’s Stoiber. “It can disrupt hormones in your body and lead to problems, things like increased risk of breast cancer, problems with fertility, things like that … ”
