Are any of you concerned about PFAS and microplastics when cooking? What are you using to cook with?
Ceramic and wood spatulas?
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Yep, or stainless steel.
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Stainless, carbon steel, and cast iron (enameled or plain). More robust, works well. Give up just the tiniest smidge of convenience on non stick.
Dupont lied so much about Teflon for so long that it’s hard to overlook claims about the safety of PFOA / PFAS safety for so little additional benefit.
Also ok with silicone spatulas for things like omelets and scrambled eggs, but again, why bother when you could just use metal or wood?
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There’s a McDonald’s three minutes down the road.
Aren’t you in Italy, the land of excellent restaurants? Turn off the stove and spend time with your family and friends!
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I switched to loose-leaf tea steel infuser from Japan to avoid teabag microplastics.
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I feel you on this. I also found some silk based tea bags as well.
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Plastic teabags were always a terrible idea. Some paper teabags can be ok. It’s harder for the leafs to open up of course so better go with loose tea for the tea lovers out there
I’ve started to worry about heavy metal and microplastics in salt. It seems most have microplastics now and heavy metals can be a problem.
This company posts testing reports of these and I’m giving them a try.
Got this titanium “tray” to use as a cutting board.
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I’ve also been using metal cutting boards now. I like wood but you have to be on it with wood and clean if off right away or it will smell.
That must dull the knives pretty quick
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Seems ok. I tent to give it a quick sharpening before each use anyways. Takes a few seconds.
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A UPLC-MS/MS study of Taiwanese market foods (seafood, meats, eggs, cereals; n = 61) found seafood contributed 52 % of adult dietary PFOS intake and 36 % of PFOA intake.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1021949818300279
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1021949818300279 -
Population biomonitoring shows Taiwanese adults ingest ~0.46 ng kg⁻¹ day⁻¹ PFOS, largely from fish and seafood, higher than many Western cohorts.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1438463920305538
Table 4. Daily perfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) intake (ng/person/day) and the proportion of total PFASs (%) among the general population in Taiwan.
| Food item | PFHxA | PFOA | PFDA | PFUnDA | PFDoDA | PFHxS | PFOS | Total PFASs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cereals | ||||||||
| Rice | 145 (6.18a) | 1175 (50.0) | 748 (31.8) | 63.4 (2.70) | 214 (9.10) | 5.28 (0.22) | –b | 2351 (20.1c) |
| Flour | 131 (9.29) | 870 (61.7) | 194 (13.8) | 10.8 (0.77) | 195 (13.8) | 6.89 (0.49) | – | 1408 (12.0) |
| Meats | ||||||||
| Pork | 137 (7.79) | 1117 (63.7) | 336 (19.2) | 18.8 (1.07) | 138 (7.85) | 8.35 (0.48) | – | 1755 (15.0) |
| Beef | 13.3 (6.11) | 139 (63.7) | 43.7 (20.0) | 2.76 (1.26) | 18.2 (8.32) | – | 1.38 (0.63) | 218 (1.86) |
| Chicken | 97.1 (8.11) | 728 (60.9) | 254 (21.2) | 10.8 (0.90) | 98.7 (8.25) | 7.47 (0.62) | – | 1196 (10.2) |
| Fish | ||||||||
| Salmon | 54.0 (5.68) | 381 (40.1) | 407 (42.8) | 31.6 (3.32) | 73.3 (7.72) | 3.56 (0.38) | – | 950 (8.12) |
| Grass carp | 51.9 (5.37) | 399 (41.2) | 346 (35.7) | 59.6 (6.15) | 81.4 (8.42) | 3.05 (0.32) | 27.0 (2.79) | 968 (8.27) |
| Seafood | ||||||||
| Oyster | 13.8 (3.22) | 126 (29.4) | 181 (42.2) | 20.5 (4.77) | 79.2 (18.4) | 1.18 (0.27) | – | 422 (3.60) |
| Shrimp | 13.2 (4.49) | 114 (38.7) | 96.9 (32.8) | 11.8 (3.99) | 54.3 (18.4) | 3.24 (1.10) | 0.88 (0.30) | 294 (2.51) |
| Clam | 15.5 (5.48) | 121 (43.1) | 97.2 (34.4) | 11.8 (4.18) | 33.9 (12.0) | 1.62 (0.57) | 0.74 (0.26) | 282 (2.41) |
| Squid | 4.86 (4.37) | 44.8 (40.2) | 27.5 (24.7) | 2.27 (2.04) | 31.9 (28.7) | – | – | 111 (0.94) |
| Liver | – | 0.80 (18.9) | 1.67 (39.6) | 0.17 (3.98) | 1.21 (28.6) | – | 0.32 (7.57) | 4.17 (0.036) |
| Egg | 42.8 (2.61) | 258 (15.8) | 999 (61.1) | 42.3 (2.59) | 292 (17.8) | 2.25 (0.14) | – | 1636 (14.0) |
| Milk | 1.25 (1.21) | 60.0 (58.3) | 39.2 (38.1) | 2.50 (2.43) | – | – | – | 103 (0.88) |
| All foods | 721 (6.15) | 5534 (47.3) | 3771 (32.2) | 289 (2.47) | 1311 (11.2) | 42.9 (0.37) | 30.3 (0.26) | 11,698 |
PFDA: perfluorodecanoic acid.
PFDoDA: perfluorododecanoic acid.
PFHxA: perfluorohexanoic acid.
PFHxS: perfluorohexane sulfonate.
PFOA: perfluorooctanoic acid.
PFOS: perfluorooctane sulfonate.
PFUnDA: perfluoroundecanoic acid.
a The proportion of the compound to the total PFASs in the single food item.
b A PFAS in which its detection frequency did not exceed 50% in a food item was not included in the estimation of daily intake.
c The proportion of the total PFASs in a food item to those of summed PFASs from all items.
If one did not consider night market food as poison, now you can. 
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Don’t use anything with PFAS. No stupid non-stick pans, no microwave popcorn, no paper cups, no GORE tex, we don’t need any of it. Cooking with them has the chance of vaporizing PFAS and turn it into even more toxic fumes. Even if you are not cooking with those stupid carbon-chlorides, just the process of making anything with PFAS requires large amounts of other PFAS and they are forever chemicals that gets in our environment and our bodies and they are terrible for both. We’ve already poisoned the planet to the point it is literally raining PFAS everywhere on the planet.
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Movie about it
Watched yesterday on Netflix (available with VPN to Australia)
We are. Not to an extreme level but certainly nothing aluminum, Teflon etc. We use glass for anything we can. Then cast iron then stainless.
We stopped using store bought wood food utensils because of 2 issues. Imports are always busted with exceeding the limits of poison by the fda. Also we tried making our own and finding good oils etc to seal wood without chemicals here, it was harder than giving a 2 year old 5 root canals!
The fda posts imports caught with higher than legal concentrations of poison in them, including cookware and packaging materials. As much as I love wood, I don’t buy it anymore (for food). If I use it, I get it myself and carbonized it to seal rather than oils and other sealants
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Taiwan is in the process of establishing enforceable PFAS standards for drinking water. In August 2024, the Ministry of Environment proposed draft limits of 50 ng/L for the combined concentration of PFOA+PFOS, and 70 ng/L for combined PFOS+PFHxS. These draft standards (expected to be formally adopted by 2025 and enforced by 2027) were based on guidelines from Japan and Australia.
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Barely 1k views after a year. 
People who care about the dangers of PFAS have already heard all about it from this youtuber about 4~5 years ago.
Dr. Achi was working at Intel but the pandemic got her on her youtuber side project. She does mostly videos about the science behind home and kitchen appliances. She has been very vocal about avoiding forever chemicals since the beginning.
She did many many videos talking about the dangers of PFAS, recommending pots and appliances without PFAS, and talking about the progress in regulating PFAS.
In one of her earliest videos, this is how she discussed the science behind air-friers.
Those were the days…
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