The Chemical Behind Non-Stick Pans Has Cost Its Makers Over $11 Billion. Now Regulators Are Moving In

DuPont began using PFOA, also known as C8, at its Washington Works plant in 1951 to make Teflon, the slick coating that would go on to cover millions of frying pans.

For decades, PFOA from the plant reached the local air and drinking water. In 2001, residents sued. As part of the settlement, an independent group of scientists, the C8 Science Panel, studied the health of around 69,000 people in the area.

In 2005, the US Environmental Protection Agency fined DuPont $16.5 million for failing to report what it knew about PFOA’s risks, at the time the largest administrative penalty in the agency’s history. In 2017, DuPont and its spin-off Chemours agreed to pay $671 million to settle around 3,500 personal injury lawsuits.

The case was later dramatized in the 2019 film Dark Waters.

Under pressure from the EPA, eight major manufacturers agreed in 2006 to phase PFOA out by 2015. That is why “PFOA-free” now appears on almost every box of non-stick cookware.

The label leaves out an important detail: the coating itself is usually still PTFE, which is also a PFAS. The chemicals that replaced PFOA in manufacturing, such as GenX, belong to the same family. In 2024, the EPA set a federal drinking water limit for GenX as well.

No coating lasts forever. Metal utensils, scouring pads and high heat all wear it down. In 2022, researchers at the University of Newcastle in Australia set out to measure what that wear leaves behind.

They found that a single scratch can release around 9,100 plastic particles, and a pan with a broken coating can shed about 2.3 million, according to the study published in Science of the Total Environment.

Heat is a separate concern. Above roughly 260°C (500°F), PTFE begins to break down and release fumes that can cause flu-like “polymer fume fever” in people. Veterinarians have long warned bird owners about the same fumes, which can be fatal to pet birds. An empty pan on a high flame can pass that temperature within minutes.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has detected PFAS in the blood of nearly every American it has tested. The chemicals build up in the body over years and leave it slowly.

Lawmakers are responding. Minnesota’s ban on cookware with intentionally added PFAS took effect in January 2025, and other states have passed labeling or phase-out rules. In Europe, five countries have proposed restricting the entire PFAS family.

Many shoppers have switched to ceramic non-stick, and most ceramic coatings do avoid PTFE. But ceramic is still a coating, and coatings wear. Ceramic pans often lose their release within a year or two of daily use.

Uncoated options have their own trade-offs. Food sticks to stainless steel, and cast iron is heavy and needs regular seasoning. For years, cooks had to choose between convenient and coating-free.

A newer category of cookware is trying to close that gap. One of the companies behind it, TINOR, makes pans struck by hand from a single sheet of bare Grade 1 titanium, with no coating of any kind.

Titanium is one of the most inert metals in use. It doesn’t react with food, it doesn’t rust, and it’s trusted for surgical and dental implants.

The release comes from the surface itself, the company says. Hammering leaves hundreds of small facets across the pan. After two minutes of preheating with a little oil or butter, those facets hold a thin film of fat and steam between the food and the metal, so eggs slide and fish lifts away whole.

With nothing on the surface to protect, the usual rules for non-stick don’t apply. Metal tongs and whisks are fine, steel wool can be used for stubborn spots, and the pans work on gas, electric and induction, in the oven and over an open fire.

Reviews of the company’s best-selling pan, the 28 cm Sear 28, return to the same points: it took a few days to learn the preheat, then food stopped sticking, and clean-up dropped to under a minute.

A typical non-stick pan costs around $50 and is often replaced every couple of years as the coating wears. Over a decade, that adds up to roughly $250, and a stack of pans in a landfill.

The Sear 28 currently sells for $129, down from $259, and ships with a free glass lid and an e-book of 100 everyday recipes, according to the company’s website. It’s covered by a lifetime guarantee on material and craftsmanship.