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Teflon: The Dirty History

Let’s be honest—most of us don’t think “atomic bomb” when we’re flipping pancakes. But here’s the wild truth: the nonstick in your trusty pan basically started with the Manhattan Project. That’s right. Teflon, the thing that keeps your eggs from clinging for dear life, was first rolled out to help the U.S. build nuclear bombs. Seriously. It gets even messier: lawsuits, corporate secrets, and health questions that still hang over our kitchens. Want to know the real story behind that glossy, easy-clean surface? Spoiler: there’s more going on than marketing lets on. Here’s what we’re diving into: the dirty secret and dark history of Teflon, how atomic ambitions ended up in your kitchen, the truth…

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Featured

 Is Your Nonstick Pan Making You Sick? The Truth About 'Teflon Flu'

Polymer fume fever, also known as Teflon flu, has reignited a debate about the safety of nonstick cookware. The illness occurs when fumes from an overheated Teflon or nonstick pan are inhaled. Nonstick pans are made with polytetrafluoroethylene (also known as PTFE). PTFEs are known as "forever chemicals" because they take decades or sometimes even hundreds of years to break down.

 Teflon Is Forever

For decades, DuPont has sold the answer to crud, gunk, and grime. What the company didn’t advertise was that its nonstick wonder sticks

 The Frightening Truth about Teflon

Have you seen Mark Ruffalo’s 2019 film ‘Dark Waters’? The American legal thriller centres on an environmental lawsuit and the dangers of Teflon, and has recently been in the spotlight after being added to Netflix. At The Green Woman, we strongly believe in reducing our daily exposure to chemicals, so naturally we were shocked by the revelations in this true story. It spurred us into doing some digging of our own and, with the help of our partners Breast Cancer UK to understand the science, we wanted to give you an update on the product at the heart of the scandal, Teflon.

Articles of Interest

Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE, Aka Teflon®)

Teflon® in your makeup? Yuck. This non-stick ingredient and other fluorinated compounds have been associated with delayed menstruation, later breast development and cancer.

Teflon and Your Home

Health Entertainment Network explores the world of non stick pans.

The Teflon chemical PTFE is often touted as a safe cousin of toxic PFAS. But is it really?

So, with all this evidence showing that PTFE might not be so great after all, surely regulators must be cooking (no pun intended) something up? One of the most familiar uses for this chemical is in Teflon, but that’s just one of its applications. PTFE is a chemical substance that has unique properties that make it very popular in a wide range of products. It has excellent heat resistance, electrical insulation properties and is extremely water repellent. Its non-stick properties make it ideal for coatings on items such as baking trays and other kitchen utensils. You can also find it in membranes in outdoor jackets and other textiles.

Dark Waters

]An attorney whose firm defends chemical companies jeopardizes his career to expose a toxic waste-dumping scheme in this drama based on a true story.

Dark Waters: what DuPont scandal can teach companies about doing the right thing

DuPont had used C-8 since the 1950s. It had known since the early 1980s that the chemical was toxic to humans, but only agreed in 2006 to phase out its use. Though the company continued to deny wrongdoing, it has become one of the classic cases in which business leaders pursued a strategy that could cause human harm long after the risks had come to their attention.

Dark Waters’ Is a Real-Life Horror Story, And You’re Part of It

Like the water crisis in Flint, the protests at Standing Rock, the Hinkley groundwater contamination case, and the many indigenous water protectors young and old, fighting to save their precious natural resources, Dark Waters brings another upsetting and frightening story forward about our jeopardized waters. “This is the sickness of our culture right now, where democracy is in service of capitalism instead of the other way around,” Ruffalo said. “If you measure a country’s health and their well-being on the GDP alone, then you’re gonna have a lot of sick people running around.”

Forever Ticking: The Teflon Promise and the Poisoned Legacy of American Innovation

The story of Teflon, born from a serendipitous discovery in the hallowed halls of DuPont in 1938, is a quintessential American tale — one of ingenuity, ambition, and the intoxicating allure of progress.

New recycling method turns Teflon into toothpaste fluoride

Teflon is also as renowned as it is infamous. Part of the larger family of poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAs), these synthetics are now synonymous with numerous environmental and public health issues. When burned, they also release toxic “forever chemicals” that linger in the environment for thousands of years. Researchers have experimented with ways to tackle Teflon for years, including a strategy combining chemical additives and LED light treatments.

People Are Still Exposed To the Teflon Chemical At Unsafe Levels, Group Says

In the aftermath of the lawsuit, the EPA warned about potential dangers of PFOA and PFOS, a related chemical, in an advisory. Both Dupont and 3M stopped using PFOA and PFOS, but the chemicals lingered in rivers and and waterways (as well as in human bodies). The EWG says more than 6.5 million people are served by water systems still contaminated with unsafe levels of the chemicals.

The Chemical Long Used in Non-Stick Pans Might Be Unsafe at Any Level

Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, was used to make DuPont’s popular Teflon coating for decades. DuPont phased out its production after a 2006 settlement with federal regulators, who had linked it to birth defects and cancer in animals — and accused the company of failing to report those hazards for more than two decades.

The Devil they Knew: Chemical Documents Analysis of Industry Influence on PFAS Science

Human harm, including pregnancy-induced hypertension, kidney and testicular cancers, and ulcerative colitis, from PFOA was not publicly established until 2011, following the reports of the C8 Science Panel, mandated and funded as part of a settlement agreement

The history of PFAS: From World War II to your Teflon pan

How DuPont and 3M turned a 1930s lab accident into one of the century’s most controversial chemicals.

The Long, Strange History of Teflon, the Indestructible Product Nothing Seems to Stick to

Chemists accidentally discovered the material in 1938, and since then it has been used for everything from helping to create the first atomic bomb to keeping your eggs from sticking to your frying pan

What Is Teflon? The Truth About PTFE, PFAS, and Safer Cookware Options

Teflon® (owned by The Chemours Company, formerly DuPont) is the brand name for polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), a fluorinated polymer.. Discovered in 1938 by a DuPont scientist, PTFE was initially used in military applications before making its way into consumer products. Over time, the Teflon® family expanded to include multiple fluorinated compounds, many of which fall under the broader category of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances). These chemicals are known for their resistance to heat, water, and stains — but that same durability means they don’t break down easily. Because they end up staying in the environment, PFAS have been dubbed “forever chemicals.”

What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in Dark Waters

As unbelievable as it may sound, DuPont really did, in the 1960s, offer some of its staff Teflon-laced cigarettes as a human experiment into the potential side effects of the PFOA-produced nonstick material, as the movie recounts. As company scientists noted in internal documents, “Nine out of ten people in the highest-dosed group were noticeably ill for an average of nine hours with flu-like symptoms that included chills, backache, fever, and coughing.”