Toxic Teflon: 10 Ways to Minimize Your Family's Exposure

To learn more about the story of toxic Teflon, read last week's post:
Toxic Teflon: How a Deadly Chemical Evaded Regulation and Ended Up inside 99.7% of Us

PFOA (Perfluorooctanoic Acid) or C8 is an essential ingredient in Teflon and for decades was used in a huge range of different products (nonstick cookware and bakeware, pizza boxes, coatings for eye glasses, waterproof clothing, and stain-proof coatings for carpets, to name a few). Because of exposure through consumer products and due to exposure as a result of the disposal of millions of pounds of chemical waste into the air, water, and landfills, 99.7% of Americans have PFOA in their blood. (source 1)

Studies have tied PFOA to an incredible range of health effects throughout the body, often even at very low exposure levels. These health effects include:

• ovarian cancer
• prostate cancer
• lymphoma
• reduced fertility
• arthritis
• hyperactivity
• altered immune responses in children
• hypotonia, or 'floppiness,' in infants" 
• ulcerative colitis
• high cholesterol
• pregnancy-induced hypertension
• thyroid disease
• testicular cancer
• kidney cancer

(sources 1, 2)

The story of toxic Teflon is a horrifying illustration of our broken regulatory system, and proof that consumers cannot rely on the reasonable assumption that if something were truly dangerous, companies wouldn’t be allowed to sell it.

In some ways, C8 [or PFOA] already is the tobacco of the chemical industry — a substance whose health effects were the subject of a decades-long corporate cover-up...And, like tobacco, C8 is a symbol of how difficult it is to hold companies responsible, even when mounting scientific evidence links their products to cancer and other diseases. (source 1)

While U.S. companies have participated in a "voluntary" (read "unenforceable") phase-out of PFOA, the not-so-different replacement chemicals industry is now using instead appear to be just as problematic. (source 3)

Does What I Do Matter?

In the face of this kind of information, it is easy to feel outraged but also helpless. However, I take the same stance with PFOA that I do with all other toxic chemicals I learn about. While I cannot eliminate my family's exposure, I can refuse to support these companies financially and minimize my family's exposure to PFOA (as well as the novel “fluorochemicals” that have replaced PFOAs in consumer products) whenever possible. Here are some ways to do that.

Read More

Toxic Teflon: How a Deadly Chemical Evaded Regulation and Ended Up inside 99.7% of Us

There is a prevailing sentiment among well-meaning people who don’t want to be unduly influenced by alarmists and worrywarts: if something were truly dangerous, they wouldn’t be allowed to sell it. Unfortunately, this logical line of thinking has been disproven time and again as a result of our broken regulatory system. The story of Toxic Teflon, as recently laid out in The Intercept’s three-part series, is a horrifying illustration of this fact. 

DuPont Suspected Teflon Harmful for Decades

PFOA (Perfluorooctanoic Acid), also known as C8, is an essential ingredient in Teflon (first introduced in 1946). DuPont is by far the leader in PFOA use and emissions in the U.S. Due to recent court battles many internal documents from DuPont have been uncovered, including “write-ups of experiments on rats, dogs, and rabbits showing that C8 was associated with a wide range of health problems that sometimes killed the lab animals…[and] hundreds of internal communications revealing that DuPont employees for many years suspected that C8 was harmful and yet continued to use it, putting the company’s workers and the people who lived near its plants at risk” (source 1).

Read More

{Teflon-free} Pumpkin Whole Grain Waffles with Pumpkin Syrup

I Found a Teflon-free Waffle Maker!

Given my deep and abiding love for breakfast foods, some might find it surprising that homemade waffles were not in my regular breakfast rotation. After all, they freeze and toast up so well! Problem is, I ditched Teflon many years ago and I couldn't find a Teflon-free waffle maker anywhere. I had seen cast iron waffle makers, but they were unseasoned, and came with parrafin wax on them (to prevent rusting). In order to use it, you had to melt off the parrafin wax and season it yourself. Sorry, but that's a little too much effort for me. [Now a pre-seasoned cast iron waffle maker, that I would buy in a heartbeat. Are you listening, Lodge Logic???]

At any rate, I had resigned myself to living without waffles. That is, until recently, when my son's umpteenth request for waffles compelled me to half-heartedly google (again) "Teflon-free waffle maker." And, lo and behold, there it was: the Oster DuraCeramic Stainless Steel Flip Waffle Maker. Now, really, I should have done my due diligence and tried to find out more about what the nonstick coating of my waffle maker is made of before purchasing it, but I was just so excited to see a PTFE-free and PFOA-free ceramic-based coating on a waffle maker that I just went ahead and purchased it. (Read Debra Lynn Dodd's take on the coating here.)

Enjoy Superfood Pumpkin Year-round

Since then I have been keeping my freezer well-stocked with my sister Jeanette's Pumpkin Whole Grain Waffles. My 6yo son loves to have these for breakfast, and I love sending him to school with a tummy full of whole grains and pumpkin goodness. We most often eat these with maple syrup, but for even more pumpkin deliciousness, try with pumpkin syrup (recipe follows).

Read More

Environmental Causes of Autism and Other Neurodevelopmental Disorders

For many years, autism research has focused on genetic factors. But researchers estimate that "the total fraction of ASD attributable to genetic inheritance may be about 30–40%." Now many are calling for more extensive research of environmental factors, including the tens of thousands of untested chemicals that individuals are exposed to via consumer products as well as the environment at large (air, water, soil). The brains of embryos and fetuses are believed to be especially susceptible to toxic chemicals. A workshop of leading researchers convened by the Mount Sinai Children's Environmental Health Center, with support from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and Autism Speaks, generated a list of "10 chemicals and mixtures widely distributed in the environment that are already suspected of causing developmental neurotoxicity":

Read More

Non-toxic Tooth Care

I’ve known for a while to avoid amalgam (metal) fillings because of possible mercury exposure, but recently while flipping through Smart Mama’s Green Guide I found out that the white fillings may be a source of BPA.  Great.  Bottom line: for these reasons and more, I would like to avoid cavities and fillings.  Here is what tooth care looks like at my house.

Read More

Cooking without Teflon

Raise your hand if you own cookware with a Teflon nonstick coating.
You're not alone.  Nonstick cookware accounts for about 60 percent of all cookware sales.

Read More

Teflon-Free Cookware and Bakeware

[This post was updated September 2015.]

Not so long ago, several of my favorite pieces of cookware had a nonstick coating.  But most nonstick coatings contain Teflon, and Teflon is associated with "smaller birth weight and size in newborn babies, elevated cholesterol, abnormal thyroid hormone levels, liver inflammation, and weaker immune defense against disease," according to the Environmental Working Group.  Some folks think as long as you don't heat an empty or damaged Teflon pan, you are doing all right.  

I personally have a general avoidance policy regarding plastic and food, but I try especially hard to avoid heating food in plastic. Although I decided early in my journey to green that I didn't want to cook or bake with plastic, it took me years to phase out all my nonstick stuff.  It's been hard to say goodbye to Mr. Teflon.  Today I am proud to say that I no longer use any nonstick cookware or bakeware.  

Read More

Homemade 100% Whole Wheat Honey Bread (without a bread machine)

A few months ago, once the weather turned colder, I decided to try making my whole wheat bread with a standing mixer and oven instead of a bread machine.  Now that I had proven to myself that I was actually going to make all of our own bread, I was willing to invest in some equipment.  Making my bread using a mixer and oven has several advantages over making bread in a bread machine: 

• My bread machine was one of the final holdouts of Teflon in my kitchen, and its nonstick coating was already showing signs of wear.  Now I make plastic-free bread by mixing the dough in a stainless steel bowl and baking the bread in my glass Pyrex loaf pans.*
• By using a mixer and oven, I have greater flexibility in the cooking process.  For example, if the weather is cold and the bread is rising more slowly, I allow the bread a longer rise.
•  I can make several loaves of bread at once (and freeze most of the loaves), instead of a loaf of bread every few days.
• A loaf of bread made in a loaf pan in the oven is just more aesthetically pleasing than the loaves that come out of the bread pan of a bread machine.  And now that I have mastered the mixer/oven method, it will be easy to use the dough for other things, like rolls.

Read More

Goodbye, Teflon. Hello, Le Creuset.

Making pancakes with Le Creuset enameled cast iron skillet (left)
and Lodge Logic preseasoned cast iron griddle (right).

Raise your hand if you own cookware with a Teflon nonstick coating.
You're not alone.  Nonstick cookware accounts for about 60 percent of all cookware sales.


But there are reasons to do without it.  Particularly if you are trying to not eat plastic.  Even the new-fangled "green" pans have their issues.  It took me many years, but I now no longer use any cookware or bakeware with nonstick coatings.  The final step in this long, long journey I took just a few months ago when I said goodbye to my Teflon skillet.  My 10" Cuisinart nonstick skillet, which I used every other day to make scrambled eggs.

Read More