Non-Stick Cookware: Safe or Suspicious?

Sometime during my father-in-law's third bout of cancer, he threw out every single nonstick piece of cookery and replaced it with expensive, old school heavy pots and pans. As I did the dishes for him at the time, I groaned and complained about how much more elbow grease I had to use to scrape and shred off the cooked oils and food. I didn’t understand at first why he made such a change and theorized he did it to cause me grief.

“There’s PFOA on that junk,” he said of the nonstick cookware. “My doctor says it causes cancer.”

What is PFOA?

“PFOA” is the acronym for perfluorooctanoic acid, the chemical used to bond that miraculous nonstick coating to our pots and pans. Not only is PFOA toxic and a carcinogen, it is associated with birth defects, increased cancer rates and adverse effects to our Immune System and Livers

Now that I’ve properly scared you, here’s a comforting piece of news for you: many studies have shown that the insignificant amount of PFOA on our nonstick pots and pans do not, in fact, have an adverse affect on our bodies. The PFOA that is found in most people comes from a number of OTHER sources in our environment, such as contaminated food, drinking water, dust, house cleaners and more.

Should You Change Your Pans?

So should you switch back over to your old-fashioned “elbow grease required” pots and pans? It’s your call. Though there may not be high levels of PFOA in nonstick coatings, it still is present. Not only that, but I’m forever wary of the sources of these studies and their financial motives – call me a conspiracy theorist if you like. Ultimately, I’m all about reducing risk and getting rid of non-stick cookware is an easy step for me to take (whereas I’m still not so sure how to get rid of every spec of “PFOA INFUSED” dust in my house…)

photo by B.A. Djano