When you need a frying pan to cook fluffy omelets, a skillet to brown mushrooms, or a sheet pan for baking an afternoon treat of chocolate chip cookies, it’s tempting to reach for something nonstick. The pots and pans tend to be inexpensive compared to stainless steel or cast iron, and they are designed to be easy to clean, a time saver in general, but especially when cooking sticky, delicate foods like eggs or fish. You likely have some questions, though, about exactly how those nonstick pots and pans are made and whether they’re safe. Maybe you’ve read an article about PFAS (or perfluoroalkyl and poly-fluoroalkyl substances), so-called forever chemicals, and you remember something about those being used in nonstick pans. Or maybe you saw the recent Food52 announcement about bidding farewell to PFAS-based chemically coated nonstick, or the many social media ads for direct-to-consumer nontoxic, nonstick cookware, and are wondering if those pastel-colored pans are preferable to their plain Jane black-and-gray predecessors.
“There’s a lot of confusing claims out there,” says Marty Mulvihill, a green chemist and cofounder of safe-technology investor Safer Made. “The challenge is getting all the information you need as a consumer to really make a judgment.”
