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PFAS non-sticking cookware is quite deadly for pet birds[0]. Teflon themselves have an article acknowledging it[1]. Now I know that our respiratory systems ar

by loupol 3y ago

PFAS non-sticking cookware is quite deadly for pet birds[0]. Teflon themselves have an article acknowledging it[1]. Now I know that our respiratory systems are much more resilient than those of birds, but out of precaution I'd still rather not be the one to test the long-term effects of cooking with those on humans. [0] https://www.allaboutparrots.com/cookware-parrot-safe/ https://www.allaboutparrots.com/cookware-parrot-safe/ [1] https://www.teflon.com/en/consumers/teflon-coatings-cookware-bakeware/safety/bird-safety https://www.teflon.com/en/consumers/teflon-coatings-cookware...

MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
Chocolate (Theobromine), Coffee (caffeine) and Candies (Xylitol) can kill a dog [0]. That doesn't indicate that they are bad for humans, so I would be careful to draw conclusions. It is called "canary in the coal mine" because birds are extremely sensitive to gases, luckily we aren't. [0] https://www.webmd.com/pets/dogs/ss/slideshow-foods-your-dog-should-never-eat https://www.webmd.com/pets/dogs/ss/slideshow-foods-your-dog-...
- betenoire 3y ago
  Don't forget that the canary in the coal mine is signal that you are about to get it, too.
  - edejong 3y ago
    On point
  - MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
    How often did you have chocolate poisoning? The point is to have an early warning in a situation where gas concentration potentially increases from harmless to dangerous levels, as in a mine shaft, where ventilation is limited. Something that is harmful in low doses to a bird isn't necessarily so to us, until it is too late, which makes the bird useful as an early warning signaller so people can get out early when the dose is still harmless and thus not easily detectable. Thus the saying "the dose makes the poison".
    - WorldMaker 3y ago
      > How often did you have chocolate poisoning? Caffeine overdoses are too common among people and I've known friends that have died or almost died from them. (I'm strongly on the never side for caffeine pill usage as the risk of an OD from coffee is much lower and involves a lot more liquid sitting on your bladder.) Theobromine in chocolate (and tea and other places) is a Caffeine relative that in us humans has a 1/10th to 1/100th the efficacy on our caffeine receptors. In dogs that relationship is reversed and theobromine is their caffeine and death by chocolate is their caffeine overdose. People can overdose on theobromine too, it just takes much higher quantities still than caffeine. Which yes, aligns with your point that doses matter, but the other thing useful thing to note about the Theobromine/Caffeine relationship is that subtly different but related chemicals have wildly different effects on different metabolisms. It's not just dose that matters, but also exploring the repercussions of entire families of chemicals (and the products they break down into) because you also need to know if a "cousin" chemical has larger efficacy at lower doses in people. (Results on small animals are still an early warning sign, the directions they may warn about aren't just exposure time or dosage amount, but also related chemicals and receptor paths and many other things.)
      - MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
        We are in agreement then - the dose makes the poison, and animals reacting much more sensitively than humans doesn’t mean we can’t safely consume something, since at some point, everything is a poison, be it water or oxygen.
- 0xEF 3y ago
  Isn't this a false equivelance fallacy? Genuine question, I am not an expert on fallacies. In any case, would it not be safer to assume the possibility of harmful impact of Chemical X until more concrete data is gathered? Granted, the fear mongering in the media needs to pump the brakes, but err on the side of caution, and all that. Then again, where does the burden of proof lie; on PFAS not being harmful? That doesn't sound right either. Bit of a headache, I guess.
  - MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
    Thinking of poisons in binaries is false - the dose makes the poison. You are eating "poisons" every day, and it is impossible not to. Plants create poisons to defend their seeds against herbivores, but you don't die when eating nuts or grains, because your body has adapted. Water will kill you if you drink too much of it. So the question is not "is this a poison", but "at what dose is this a poison". You could argue that with food, there is a necessary trade-off, but with PFAS there isn't, because we don't need it to survive. But that is true for most of modern civilisation, and what you then end up with is the "this substance is known to the state of California to cause cancer" on basically everything. You are right that this becomes a difficult problem of epistemology. Basically, it is impossible to prove "this is safe", only the opposite, and often it is not easy to prove conclusively. I'm not sure where the right balance lies, either.
    - ramblenode 3y ago
      > Thinking of poisons in binaries is false - the dose makes the poison. This is true, but by itself this model presents an incomplete picture for assessing the risk of PFAS. Two additional models are important: bioaccumulation and half-life. PFAS stick around (pardon the pun) in the environment. They are biomagnified upwards through the food chain. If we are releasing them into the environment at a greater rate than they are degrading, then the biosphere is building up a reservoir of PFAS whose acute effects in humans will lag their release into the environment. Additionally, it is hard to assess the lethal dose of something over a lifespan vs. an acute exposure. This is because slow poisons tend to pick up correlations and interactions with other illnesses as they progress over time (e.g. someone who struggles to get out of bed because of a persistent infection will also get less exercise and sunlight). So the long-term effects of things on the body tend to be less tractable research questions and thus have a negative bias in the scientific literature, which can easily be mistaken for "evidence of absence". This is why the precautionary principle is important for anything that is as pervasive as PFAS.
adrr 3y ago
Fumes from seasoning a cast iron pan or high heat cooking causes cancer even in low amounts. If you want to be safe cook things at low temperature. https://www.pca.state.mn.us/pollutants-and-contaminants/polycyclic-aromatic-hydrocarbons-pahs https://www.pca.state.mn.us/pollutants-and-contaminants/poly...
- putnambr 3y ago
  From your link, a specific PAH called benzopyrene _may_ cause cancer in low amounts. It's a pretty extraordinary claim to say that we should be concerned about carcinogens from cooking with cast iron, which has been used long before our current high rates of cancer. I could see that being an argument against certain oils, but contrast that with the corresponding increase in cancer rates after the proliferation of teflon and PFAS in cookware/durable goods/clothing/lubcrication.
  - neuronerdgirl 3y ago
    To further your point, there is shockingly little education to the general public about cooking oil smoke points. I've cooked more or less exclusively with grapeseed or safflower oil since learning about it, but so many people use low smoke point oils (olive oil mostly, thanks health craze) for high-temp purposes and there's nothing to indicate to them that there is a problem
    - bobthepanda 3y ago
      We ripped out home ec in US public schools long ago to focus on things that were standardize-tested.
    - jhbadger 3y ago
      This can be exaggerated though. Obviously you don't want to deep fry things in olive oil, but some people say ridiculous things like "olive oil should only be used as a condiment and not as a cooking oil" ignoring that people in the Mediterranean, following a diet that seems to be one of (if not the) heathiest diets on the planet, routinely cook with it.
majormajor 3y ago
> out of precaution I'd still rather not be the one to test the long-term effects of cooking with those on humans. At this point that experiment already happened on previous generations, yah? I want further research and restrictions on these things, because even the marginal effects on populations of billions means millions of people harmed, but we're so many decades in that "only beginning to understand" seems a bit overstated - if the effect size was hugely toxic wouldn't we have seen it by now (like cigarettes). Life expectancy plateauing or starting to tail off is not great, but there are a lot more obvious causes for a lot of that, and it's not critical yet. I would rather be more proactive about new stuff in general than focused retrospectively on PFAS.

by loupol 3y ago

MrBuddyCasino 3y ago

Chocolate (Theobromine), Coffee (caffeine) and Candies (Xylitol) can kill a dog [0]. That doesn't indicate that they are bad for humans, so I would be careful to draw conclusions. It is called "canary in the coal mine" because birds are extremely sensitive to gases, luckily we aren't. [0] https://www.webmd.com/pets/dogs/ss/slideshow-foods-your-dog-should-never-eat https://www.webmd.com/pets/dogs/ss/slideshow-foods-your-dog-...

betenoire 3y ago
Don't forget that the canary in the coal mine is signal that you are about to get it, too.
- edejong 3y ago
  On point
- MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
  How often did you have chocolate poisoning? The point is to have an early warning in a situation where gas concentration potentially increases from harmless to dangerous levels, as in a mine shaft, where ventilation is limited. Something that is harmful in low doses to a bird isn't necessarily so to us, until it is too late, which makes the bird useful as an early warning signaller so people can get out early when the dose is still harmless and thus not easily detectable. Thus the saying "the dose makes the poison".
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    > How often did you have chocolate poisoning? Caffeine overdoses are too common among people and I've known friends that have died or almost died from them. (I'm strongly on the never side for caffeine pill usage as the risk of an OD from coffee is much lower and involves a lot more liquid sitting on your bladder.) Theobromine in chocolate (and tea and other places) is a Caffeine relative that in us humans has a 1/10th to 1/100th the efficacy on our caffeine receptors. In dogs that relationship is reversed and theobromine is their caffeine and death by chocolate is their caffeine overdose. People can overdose on theobromine too, it just takes much higher quantities still than caffeine. Which yes, aligns with your point that doses matter, but the other thing useful thing to note about the Theobromine/Caffeine relationship is that subtly different but related chemicals have wildly different effects on different metabolisms. It's not just dose that matters, but also exploring the repercussions of entire families of chemicals (and the products they break down into) because you also need to know if a "cousin" chemical has larger efficacy at lower doses in people. (Results on small animals are still an early warning sign, the directions they may warn about aren't just exposure time or dosage amount, but also related chemicals and receptor paths and many other things.)
    - MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
      We are in agreement then - the dose makes the poison, and animals reacting much more sensitively than humans doesn’t mean we can’t safely consume something, since at some point, everything is a poison, be it water or oxygen.
0xEF 3y ago
Isn't this a false equivelance fallacy? Genuine question, I am not an expert on fallacies. In any case, would it not be safer to assume the possibility of harmful impact of Chemical X until more concrete data is gathered? Granted, the fear mongering in the media needs to pump the brakes, but err on the side of caution, and all that. Then again, where does the burden of proof lie; on PFAS not being harmful? That doesn't sound right either. Bit of a headache, I guess.
- MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
  Thinking of poisons in binaries is false - the dose makes the poison. You are eating "poisons" every day, and it is impossible not to. Plants create poisons to defend their seeds against herbivores, but you don't die when eating nuts or grains, because your body has adapted. Water will kill you if you drink too much of it. So the question is not "is this a poison", but "at what dose is this a poison". You could argue that with food, there is a necessary trade-off, but with PFAS there isn't, because we don't need it to survive. But that is true for most of modern civilisation, and what you then end up with is the "this substance is known to the state of California to cause cancer" on basically everything. You are right that this becomes a difficult problem of epistemology. Basically, it is impossible to prove "this is safe", only the opposite, and often it is not easy to prove conclusively. I'm not sure where the right balance lies, either.
  - ramblenode 3y ago
    > Thinking of poisons in binaries is false - the dose makes the poison. This is true, but by itself this model presents an incomplete picture for assessing the risk of PFAS. Two additional models are important: bioaccumulation and half-life. PFAS stick around (pardon the pun) in the environment. They are biomagnified upwards through the food chain. If we are releasing them into the environment at a greater rate than they are degrading, then the biosphere is building up a reservoir of PFAS whose acute effects in humans will lag their release into the environment. Additionally, it is hard to assess the lethal dose of something over a lifespan vs. an acute exposure. This is because slow poisons tend to pick up correlations and interactions with other illnesses as they progress over time (e.g. someone who struggles to get out of bed because of a persistent infection will also get less exercise and sunlight). So the long-term effects of things on the body tend to be less tractable research questions and thus have a negative bias in the scientific literature, which can easily be mistaken for "evidence of absence". This is why the precautionary principle is important for anything that is as pervasive as PFAS.

adrr 3y ago

Fumes from seasoning a cast iron pan or high heat cooking causes cancer even in low amounts. If you want to be safe cook things at low temperature. https://www.pca.state.mn.us/pollutants-and-contaminants/polycyclic-aromatic-hydrocarbons-pahs https://www.pca.state.mn.us/pollutants-and-contaminants/poly...

putnambr 3y ago
From your link, a specific PAH called benzopyrene _may_ cause cancer in low amounts. It's a pretty extraordinary claim to say that we should be concerned about carcinogens from cooking with cast iron, which has been used long before our current high rates of cancer. I could see that being an argument against certain oils, but contrast that with the corresponding increase in cancer rates after the proliferation of teflon and PFAS in cookware/durable goods/clothing/lubcrication.
- neuronerdgirl 3y ago
  To further your point, there is shockingly little education to the general public about cooking oil smoke points. I've cooked more or less exclusively with grapeseed or safflower oil since learning about it, but so many people use low smoke point oils (olive oil mostly, thanks health craze) for high-temp purposes and there's nothing to indicate to them that there is a problem
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    We ripped out home ec in US public schools long ago to focus on things that were standardize-tested.
  - jhbadger 3y ago
    This can be exaggerated though. Obviously you don't want to deep fry things in olive oil, but some people say ridiculous things like "olive oil should only be used as a condiment and not as a cooking oil" ignoring that people in the Mediterranean, following a diet that seems to be one of (if not the) heathiest diets on the planet, routinely cook with it.

majormajor 3y ago

> out of precaution I'd still rather not be the one to test the long-term effects of cooking with those on humans. At this point that experiment already happened on previous generations, yah? I want further research and restrictions on these things, because even the marginal effects on populations of billions means millions of people harmed, but we're so many decades in that "only beginning to understand" seems a bit overstated - if the effect size was hugely toxic wouldn't we have seen it by now (like cigarettes). Life expectancy plateauing or starting to tail off is not great, but there are a lot more obvious causes for a lot of that, and it's not critical yet. I would rather be more proactive about new stuff in general than focused retrospectively on PFAS.