PFAS, Nonstick Cookware, and the Truth About "Forever Chemicals"

Let me start with something that might sound strange coming from a company that sells uncoated pans: the PTFE coating on a Teflon pan probably isn't going to hurt you.

The catch is that some of the chemicals used to make that coating are a real problem, just not always in the way the headlines suggest.

For decades, nonstick was the default choice. You bought the pan, eggs slid off it, and nobody thought much about what the surface was or how it got there. Then "forever chemicals" entered the conversation, and suddenly PFAS were everywhere: in the news, in lawsuits, in your bloodstream… We make carbon-steel pans at Strata, so we have a horse in this race, but the goal here isn't to scare you off Teflon. The goal is to clearly explain what PFAS are, which risks are real, and which are overstated.

Two Very Different Kinds of PFAS

PFAS are built around the carbon-fluorine bond, one of the strongest in chemistry. That's what makes them so useful. They resist heat, water, oil, and acid. This non-reactivity is also why they don't break down. "PFAS" now covers thousands of compounds, but for our purposes they split into two families that behave nothing alike:

Small, non-polymer PFAS. Individual molecules that dissolve in water and travel through the environment. This group includes the legacy long-chain compounds (PFOA and PFOS, both eight-carbon molecules) along with the shorter-chain replacements that came later. The long-chain ones build up in the body over years.

Fluoropolymers. Large molecules like PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene). Once PTFE is polymerized and cured, it's an inert solid plastic. It doesn't dissolve, doesn't easily cross into cells, and isn't meaningfully absorbed if you swallow a fleck of it.

The nonstick layer on a pan is almost always PTFE, the fluoropolymer. Surprisingly, the more worrying chemicals aren't the PTFE itself but the small-molecule PFAS used to manufacture it. When someone asks whether "Teflon is safe," the honest answer has to account for two separate things: the coating on your pan, and the chemicals used to produce it, which mostly end up somewhere else entirely.

The Coating vs. the Chemicals that Make it

On its own, PTFE is stable up to about 500°F (260°C) in a normal kitchen. Decades of use and FDA review point to the same conclusion: a properly made PTFE pan doesn't shed meaningful amounts of polymer into your food. If you leave an empty pan on high heat past that point and it's a different story. The fumes can make you sick, but that's misuse, not everyday cooking.

The real problem is upstream in the manufacturing cycle. Making PTFE requires a surfactant to keep the polymer particles suspended in water during production. For years that surfactant was PFOA; extraordinarily persistent, and able to linger in the human body for years. Under the EPA's PFOA Stewardship Program, U.S. manufacturers agreed to eliminate it, and they'd phased it out by 2015. That's why every major nonstick pan sold here now carries a "PFOA-free" label.

"PFOA-free" wasn’t the end, though. PFOA was swapped for a newer class of shorter-chain fluorosurfactants, the best known of which is GenX (chemical name HFPO-DA). GenX was developed under DuPont around 2009 and is now made by Chemours, the company DuPont spun its fluoroproducts business into in 2015. It clears the body faster than PFOA and was pitched as the safer alternative. Little of it is meant to remain in the finished coating, but it's central to the manufacturing, and it has to go somewhere.

GenX isn't the only replacement in use, and the industry is shifting again, this time toward processes that rely on shorter-chain aids or no fluorinated surfactant at all. The takeaway for a shopper is simple: PFOA-free does not mean PFAS-free. The polymer is itself a PFAS, and unless a pan carries an explicit "PFAS-free" claim, a fluorosurfactant was most likely part of making it.

What the Health Data Shows

The strongest evidence of harm comes from the extremes. This includes factory workers, people living next to manufacturing plants, and lab animals dosed far above anything a consumer meets. In those settings, the legacy compounds (PFOA and PFOS) have been tied to real effects:

• higher cholesterol and liver enzymes

• weaker vaccine response in children

• lower birth weight

• increased risk of certain cancers

  
  

On the last point: in 2023, IARC (the World Health Organization's cancer agency) moved PFOA into Group 1, its top category, "carcinogenic to humans." That classification rests on sufficient evidence of cancer in lab animals plus strong mechanistic evidence in exposed people; the human epidemiology, pointing mainly to kidney and testicular cancer, was graded more cautiously as "limited." PFOS, by comparison, lands in a lower category: possibly carcinogenic.

GenX was supposed to sidestep all this. It's far less bioaccumulative and leaves the body in days to weeks rather than years. However, EPA's 2021 toxicity assessment found it still does clear damage in animal studies at low doses: liver toxicity above all (cell death and tissue changes), plus kidney effects, immune suppression, developmental impacts, and early hints of cancer. EPA set GenX's chronic reference dose at just 3 nanograms per kilogram per day, lower than the 20 ng/kg-day it used for PFOA back in 2016. That's a striking result for a chemical marketed as the gentler option. EPA has since revised PFOA's numbers sharply downward, so by today's federal science PFOA is judged the more potent of the two. The point isn't that GenX is worse than PFOA, it's that "shorter-lived" never meant "harmless."

For a home cook using an intact pan at normal temperatures, direct GenX exposure from cookware is very low. The bigger concern is the slow accumulation of these chemicals over a lifetime from every source at once. The largest of those sources, by far, is drinking water.

PFAS in the Water Supply

Almost nothing degrades PFAS, which is the whole meaning of "forever." GenX makes this worse in one specific way: it's extremely water-soluble, over 750 grams per liter, and travels through soil and groundwater faster and farther than the older long-chain compounds. Conventional water treatment barely touches it. Even activated carbon, which is typically very effective, tends to let it break through.

The best example of this is Cape Fear River in North Carolina, where discharges from a Chemours plant seeded GenX across surface water, groundwater, tap water, and even the rain. Similar stories have surfaced near other fluorochemical sites. No single pan is to blame here. Cookware is a tiny slice of an industry that also makes textiles, packaging, semiconductors, and firefighting foam. Every deliberate use adds to a load that never decreases, only accumulates.

Regulators have started to respond, but it’s complicated. Several states, including Minnesota, Colorado, and Vermont, have banned intentionally added PFAS in cookware, with broader phase-outs running out to 2032. At the federal level the picture keeps shifting: the EPA set its first enforceable drinking-water limits for GenX and several other PFAS in 2024, then in 2026 proposed rescinding the GenX limits while keeping the stricter caps on PFOA and PFOS. Increasingly, where you live decides what comes out of your tap.

Where PFAS are Worth it

We don't yet have airtight proof that today's GenX levels in the environment are causing large-scale harm to people and wildlife, but the evidence keeps pointing in one direction, and the chemicals aren't going anywhere once released. Our opinion is that in most consumer uses, the payoff doesn't justify the risk.

There are places where fluoropolymers really do earn it: aerospace seals, medical implants, high-performance gaskets, etc. Those are jobs nothing else can do. For a frying pan, that is not the case; the benefit is convenience. A well-seasoned carbon-steel, cast-iron, or stainless pan will sear, release, and outlast a coated one once you learn how to use it, without putting any generation of PFAS into the supply chain or your kitchen.

Aside from the controversial effects of PFAS, there's a second, quieter cost to coated cookware: it wears out. A coating is a consumable. It degrades, it scratches, and eventually the pan goes in the trash and you buy another one: more landfill, more money, repeat. Seasoning works the opposite way. It isn't a finish that depletes; it's built up by the act of cooking, and rebuilt every time you cook again. No matter what you do to it, you can bring it back at home with nothing but a scrubber, some oil, and heat. That's why hundred-year-old cast-iron skillets still turn up at estate sales ready to use. A surface that repairs itself instead of wearing away is a pan you buy once, which, PFAS aside, may be the most sustainable thing about it.

A Cleaner Way to Cook

If you want serious performance without buying into the cycle of one regrettable chemical replacing another, uncoated cookware is a proven answer. Our pans are carbon-steel clad over an aluminum core: the aluminum spreads heat evenly, and the carbon steel surface builds its own natural, polymerized seasoning. You get dependable low-stick cooking, oven safety well past 500°F, decades of life, and no added PFAS of any kind.

The science here is complicated and often misrepresented in the headlines. Our summary: although they are all technically PFAS "forever chemicals," the small-molecule processing aids (old PFOA, today's GenX) are the real concern, not the cured PTFE on your pan. The whole class of chemicals lingers in the environment indefinitely, and coating-free pans already cook beautifully, which makes it more than reasonable to skip the forever chemicals where you can. Cook well, cut what you don't need, and keep your attention where it belongs: on the food.

For more info, check out our YouTube channel @StrataCookware, or find us on Reddit u/stratapan.