My advice would be: continue to use them, carefully, if they’re in good shape. Teflon skillets are coated with PTFE, which is a perfluorinated polymer — it’s p

My advice would be: continue to use them, carefully, if they’re in good shape. Teflon skillets are coated with PTFE, which is a perfluorinated polymer — it’s plastic, not a soapy soluble substance. It’s very inert, and it seems to be mostly harmless, but it has a couple of nasty properties: 1. Manufacturing involves using heavily fluorinated surfactants, and those are genuinely nasty chemicals. Only trace amounts should remain in the pan, but I wouldn’t want to be around the factory or its waste stream. 2. It starts to decompose, slowly, at temperatures at which it’s still solid. This is obnoxious for manufacturing. It also means that if you get it too hot at home, it decomposes. I think the results of the decomposition are mostly gasses, and they seem to be especially toxic to birds. Don’t overheat it! This can be challenging, especially on some stoves (ones with big gas flames that hit the sides of the pan or crappy electric stoves with terrible temperature control). 3. It’s soft and easily damaged. Try to avoid scratching it off and eating the pieces. Eww! You can buy “ceramic” coated pans instead. “Ceramic” in this context appears to be almost meaningless, and there are patents for “ceramic” coatings that involve fluorinated silicone compounds. This sounds worse than PTFE to me. There are now a few brands selling explicitly PFAS-free nonstick pans, both “ceramic” and polyester-based. I’d go for the former — do you really want to eat the inevitable bits of polyester that will burn or scratch off into your food?