Non-stick pans are very practical: to cook a piece of meat, a fried egg or even a fillet of fish, it is not necessary to add oil or butter. Great for the line!
Yes, but here it is: after a few years, our non-stick pans tend to wear out. The Teflon coating, in particular, can deteriorate and lose its properties. Worse: according to a new study carried out by the University of Newcastle (in Australia), a used non-stick frying pan could release tiny pieces of plastic into the food… and thus harm our health.
Plastic micro- and nanoparticles
To reach this disturbing conclusion, the Australian researchers carried out several experiments with non-stick cookware; using different techniques (algorithms and spectroscopy, for example), they were able to assess the quantity of micro- and nanoparticles released during cooking. And their results are frightening.
Indeed: in the space of about 30 seconds of cooking (the time to sear a steak, therefore), a very damaged non-stick pan can release up to 2.3 million plastic particles directly into the food. And when the Teflon coating is “just” a little scraped, an average of 9100 particles are released during cooking.
Conclusion ? To avoid eating plastic, Australian researchers recommend that we systematically throw away our used and damaged non-stick pans without any regrets. In addition, they advise not to use sharp and cutting kitchen utensils on a non-stick surface: there is no question of cutting the meat directly in the pan, so…
Source : Science of The Total Environment
