Teflon has long been a godsend in the kitchen. It’s easier to cook with, since foods don’t stick. It’s easier to wash – and easier on the environment – since it requires less detergent and no dishwasher energy. And it’s easier on the heart and the waistline, since it eliminates the need for cooking in lots of oil, butter or margarine.

Yet Teflon has recently gone from the frying pan into the fire, thanks to some money-hungry lawyers. They’ve cooked up a scary story, adding a dollop of hyperbole for good measure. Unfortunately, they left out common sense and science.

Two law firms filed a class action lawsuit Tuesday (July 19) on behalf of consumers regarding a chemical used to make Teflon called perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). The lawyers claim PFOA may be hazardous and want DuPont, Inc, the maker of Teflon, to pay $5 billion. If the suit pans out, whatever is left after attorneys’ fees would go to replace everyone’s cookware, impose a warning label on other Teflon products, and pay for medical monitoring and more research.  

"I don't have to prove that it causes cancer,” one of the slick attorneys told the Associated Press.  “I only have to prove that DuPont lied in a massive attempt to continue selling their product."

But the greasy lawyers’ charges against Teflon just don’t stick.

Here’s the real story. An EPA advisory panel draft report last month concluded PFOA is a "likely" human carcinogen based on massive-dose rodent studies. Experts have disagreed with the recommendation, noting that such studies have historically been extremely poor indicators of human carcinogens. That’s in part because rodents aren’t just little people with little people physiology, but mostly because it appears it’s the high dose given the animals that makes their DNA-repair systems go haywire and form tumors.

Be that as it may, the new report has nothing to do with the Teflon on your cookware. PFOA doesn’t come as a side order with your eggs and bacon because the chemical is destroyed in the manufacturing process.

This has been tested repeatedly. Most recently, a study in the June 1 issue of Environmental Science & Technology confirmed that Teflon-coated products, including cookware and clothing (such as Gore-Tex), cause no exposure to PFOA.

Yes, DuPont funded the study; but somehow it seems unfair to force – say, the Girl Scouts – to foot the bill. Moreover it was conducted by an independent research firm, Environ, and a panel of three researchers led by Harvard Center for Risk Analysis executive director George Gray rigorously evaluated it. "Even when cookware coated with Teflon was abraded [scratched] with a knife, no PFOA was detected” said toxicologist F. Jay Murray, one of the three reviewers.

Earlier studies by the China Academy of Inspection and Quarantine and the Danish Technological Institute also showed no exposure to PFOA from the use of non-stick cookware. The Chinese researchers found no traces of PFOA in 28 different Teflon-coated pans from 18 different manufacturers. Continued...