What it is
Polytetrafluoroethylene — Teflon, to its friends — is a fluoropolymer whose carbon–fluorine bonds make it absurdly slippery and stable up to about 260 °C. Those same bonds make it a polymeric member of the PFAS “forever chemicals” family. The historical villains were processing aids like PFOA used to make it; the everyday question is what a worn coating sheds into dinner.
Where you meet it
Non-stick frypans and saucepans, rice cooker bowls, sandwich presses, waffle irons, reusable baking liners. The wider PFAS family also shows up in grease-proof food packaging and stain-resistant fabrics.
What the research shows
The particle numbers come from Australia: Flinders and Newcastle researchers used Raman imaging to show a single crack in a non-stick coating can release ~9,100 particles, and a broken coating up to ~2.3 million micro- and nanoplastics (Science of The Total Environment, 2022) lab. Every flake you can see is a crowd you can’t.
On the chemicals: IARC classified legacy PFOA as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1) and PFOS as possibly carcinogenic (2B) in 2023 (IARC) human obs. animal — driven largely by contaminated water and industrial exposure, not by cooking on an intact pan. Ingested PTFE flakes themselves are generally considered biologically inert, but long-term data are thin early. Separately and less controversially: overheating PTFE past ~260 °C releases fumes that cause “polymer fume fever” in people and are notoriously lethal to pet birds — long-standing occupational knowledge.
What I do
My worn non-stick went out with the scratched-pan purge — replaced by a ceramic-coated set, a titanium pan and the plan to add cast iron for searing. Where non-stick remains in your kitchen: medium heat, never preheat it empty, no metal utensils, no scourers — and retire it at the first flake, because the coating that fed you for years is now feeding itself to you.
The honest bit
“PFOA-free” labels are table stakes, not virtue — PFOA left manufacturing around 2013–2015, and its replacements (GenX-type chemistries) are still PFAS. The verified everyday output of a damaged pan is particles, not PFOA. And the alternatives have their own fine print: ceramic-coated pans wear out too, just without the fluorine.