Yvonne BurkartPhD · toxicologist and low-tox consumer advocate
Replace the pan you use most with cast iron, stainless steel or pure ceramic; scratched or not, it is shedding into your food.
What it rests onLaboratory detection of PTFE particles released from cookware into food (Luo 2022, Cole 2024), plus the regrettable-substitution argument and the persistence of the PFAS class. She offers no dietary dose estimate.
Source: dryvonneburkart.com ↗
Joe SchwarczPhD · chemist, director of the McGill Office for Science and Society
The coating is inert; swallowing a flake of it is not a toxicological event.
What it rests onChemistry of the polymer: PTFE is inert and does not react with food, so ingestion of coating fragments is not the same event as ingestion of a bioavailable chemical. His stated residual risk is overheating fumes, and his stated at-risk population is birds.
Source: mcgill.ca ↗
Schwarcz is answering the household question about a scratched pan and swallowed flakes. Burkart's supporting studies measure particle release under laboratory conditions and do not estimate a dietary dose, so the two sides are not disagreeing about a measured exposure; they are disagreeing about whether particle presence without a dose estimate warrants replacement.
Both agree PTFE releases fumes when overheated and that this is a real hazard, both agree birds are the acutely vulnerable case, and both agree PFOA has been phased out of the coating itself. Burkart's overheating advice and Schwarcz's overheating caution are the same advice.
A dietary dose estimate for ingested PTFE particles from normal cooking, and bioavailability data on whether ingested fluoropolymer particles are absorbed at all. Both sides point at the same missing number from opposite directions.
You do, and your call is dated, kept, and yours to change. Follow the people you already trust and what they publish turns into a short daily practice.
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