KATIE: Because we’re all exposed to these levels of PFAS regularly, it’s possible that reducing it where you can may have some impact on the amount of PFAS that you’re exposed to. And I think consumer demand is partially driving companies deciding to try to find other solutions.
CHRISTINE: I’m Christine Cyr Clisset.
ROSIE: I’m Rosie Guerin and you’re listening to The Wirecutter Show.
CHRISTINE: Rosie, hello.
ROSIE: Hi.
CHRISTINE: I am here.
ROSIE: I’m frightened.
CHRISTINE: Yes, you can see it in my eyes. I am going to be really school-marmy today and I have brought a quiz, especially for you.
ROSIE: Oh no. Go on.
CHRISTINE: Okay. So you’re actually taking it for the team here, all the listeners listening. I want you to define forever chemicals.
ROSIE: So there’s chemicals. Those ones are kind of around. Do you know what I mean? It’s matter. It’s sort of not created and it’s definitely not destroyed.
CHRISTINE: Yes.
ROSIE: And forever chemicals are similar.
CHRISTINE: Yeah.
ROSIE: And those are around not for a short period of time, but actually forever.
CHRISTINE: I can see you in high school. You probably passed a lot of quizzes.
ROSIE: National Honor Society.
CHRISTINE: All right. So you’re not totally wrong, but it actually has a clearer definition. We’ve probably seen forever chemicals in headlines in the news. It’s basically shorthand for a class of compounds known as Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. That is such a mouthful, but it’s otherwise known as PFAS. This is maybe the thing that you’ve seen more commonly. These are used to make things like non-stick cookware and rain jackets and other things that have either non-stick coatings on them or that are waterproof.
ROSIE: And they’re called forever chemicals because they last forever?
CHRISTINE: Kind of. They’re just in the environment for a long, long time. So people have been increasingly concerned about PFAS. There are health risks associated to these chemicals when they make it into your body, which they do. They’re in the water or they’re in soil or they’re actually in the products that you might be using daily. So there’s things like cancer and fertility issues. There’s a whole host of risks.
ROSIE: Are they plastics?
CHRISTINE: Not exactly…
ROSIE: Okay, because I feel like this is a thing that gets conflated as well.
CHRISTINE: Right, I think people confuse PFAS with microplastics. PFAS can be found in plastics, but what we’re talking about today is separate from that. We’re going to focus on coatings made with PFAS…And I’m really excited for this episode because there is a whole new crop of products coming out that avoid using PFAS.
ROSIE: And so our guest today is Katie Okamoto.
CHRISTINE: Yes.
ROSIE: Our sustainability editor here at Wirecutter.
CHRISTINE: Katie is going to rejoin us today. She just finished editing four articles that we published about PFAS and about new products that are coming out that don’t use PFAS in them. And she has a ton of great advice around whether people should be thinking about replacing their products, whether these new products are any good. So she’s going to kind of give it all to us today.
ROSIE: I’m really curious because I imagine that PFAS are in these products for a reason. So it’ll be interesting to hear what they’re like without them.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, I’m very curious.
ROSIE: All right. Well, we’ll talk to Katie after the break.
CHRISTINE: Welcome back. Today we’re here talking with Katie Okamoto, Wirecutter’s sustainability editor. Welcome back to the show, Katie.
KATIE: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited.
CHRISTINE: So today we are talking about this family of chemicals called PFAS, which is being phased out of a lot of products. In the intro, I briefly defined what PFAS is. I gave sort of the very complicated name.
ROSIE: Sciency.
CHRISTINE: The sciency name. But I want you, Katie, in real world terms, explain what PFAS is. Where did it come from and what is it used in?
KATIE: Sure. There’s thousands of these chemicals and it’s a class of chemicals. They’re synthetic compounds. They have carbon and fluorine bonds. And they were actually, I believe, discovered by accident and applied really and developed in the ’40s. After the war, chemical companies, DuPont, 3M, they started applying these chemicals and marketing them for consumer goods. So Teflon is the most recognizable example of this and it was the earliest application. Teflon is PTFE. It’s a kind of type of PFAS polymer. And it got added to things like frying pans, as you can probably guess, rain jackets.
And these chemicals have kind of just exploded and they’re now used in everything from firefighting foams and these kinds of industrial uses to things that you might not expect like dental floss or the inside of some food packaging, although that’s no longer happening in the United States, but they really proliferated. And the reason behind that is that they’re really good at repelling water, oil, other materials. So things that you wanted to be slick or things that you wanted to be prevented from getting soggy like a pizza box, they were great at that. And that’s really why they became so pervasive in consumer goods.
ROSIE: And where are these commonly found, Katie?
KATIE: They’re used a lot in industry applications. So electronics manufacturing, firefighting, aviation. But when it comes to the stuff that we have in our homes, again, they’re used to help you keep things from getting greasy, stained, repelling water. So nonstick cooking surfaces, they were showing up in rice cookers, in frying pans, in outdoor gear. They were used a lot in something called durable water-repellent coatings. Gore-Tex has reformulated, but for many years it was used in parkas, raincoats, even shoes.
ROSIE: I’m sure once this was discovered, it unlocked this whole opportunity for certain products because as you’re saying, this slick quality, you can imagine so many uses.
KATIE: Totally. Yeah. And because they became so pervasive, they really are hard to contain and they move easily through water. And so that’s really the bigger environmental and public health problem that PFAS pose, which is that they’ve been found in drinking water to varying degrees. They’ve been found in our soils. They can get into the food chain through that mechanism. They’re even found in the blood of polar bears in the Arctic. It’s very likely that we all have some levels of PFAS in our blood.
So they really are extremely slippery little guys. And that is really the crux of it is that we’re all exposed to these from a lot of different avenues to varying degrees. There are certain occupations that are higher risk. And of course, if you live closer to an area where there’s contamination or pollution or you work in certain sectors, you might have higher levels with more potential health implications. But at a low level, we likely all have these chemicals in our bloodstreams. And that’s an area of continued study, the long-term impacts of those kind of low levels of habitual exposure.
CHRISTINE: It’s not a lovely thing to think about these chemicals in our bodies. What are the risks that we know of so far around having PFAS in our bodies? What are the health risks?
KATIE: It really does vary on the exposure levels. There’s a very classic concept in toxicology that the dose makes the poison. That’s a little bit more nuanced when it comes to PFAS. We’re still learning about the kind of combination of effects of accumulating chemicals and time. All of that said, it’s unlikely that any specific product is going to give you a specific health outcome through using it.
A lot of the studies around the health impacts from these chemicals are linked to actually two PFAS chemicals of greatest concern, which is PFOA and PFOS. These were largely phased out of use in the United States, but there’s been a ton of research about these kind of starting in the 1950s and ’60s. And for a while actually, internal company memos had flagged both of these chemicals as toxic. They linked them to liver damage, birth defects in animal models, certain cancers had elevated rates among factory workers. This is stuff that companies like DuPont were uncovering in the ’70s and ’80s and largely withheld from federal regulators and the public.
In the early 2000s, those documents were made public as a result of a really high profile lawsuit that you might have heard of. But if I were to just simplify here, PFOA and PFOS have been linked to cancer risks, reproductive and development impacts, effects on the immune system and metabolism, endocrine disruption as well, and more impacts.
As those have gotten phased out, they’ve gotten replaced with other PFAS chemicals. GenX and PFBS are some very common examples and they have shorter molecular structures. They’re still linked to certain health impacts at certain concentrations. Same idea, like liver and kidney damage development and reproductive impacts, immune system function and cancer risks in some lab animal studies. So this is really an ongoing area of research. I just want to emphasize that again, it really does depend on exposure and other kind of health risk factors for developing any of these conditions.
ROSIE: I’m wondering how do PFAS get into the body? Will I ingest these forever chemicals if I’m say cooking on a non-stick skillet?
KATIE: The main ways that PFAS chemicals get into our bodies is through ingestion, meaning taking it in water or food or inhalation, so breathing it in. A lot of exposures at a public health level seem to be coming from drinking water that’s been contaminated with PFAS chemicals or through unfortunately our food. The exposure that we get from using individual products is considered to be a lot lower. But like I said, we’re all exposed to some small levels of PFAS probably on a daily basis, certainly over a year. And so there might be reasons to kind of try to reduce your use of consumer products because it’s an area that’s sort of easier to control.
ROSIE: Katie, how does PFAS get into rainwater, groundwater, the ocean?
KATIE: It comes from multiple pathways. A lot of it is coming from manufacturing. A lot of it is coming from industrial uses. PFAS have been used in firefighting foams, for example, to fight wildfires. And so that’s an application that’s … It’s an emergency. You use the thing that works really well, but then it can get into groundwater or into oceans. There’s also been an issue, a pretty big issue of using sewage that has PFAS in it for agricultural use. And that has been a major source of PFAS in soils and it’s kind of an ongoing discussion about how to handle that.
They also bioaccumulate. So part of the reason why scientists believe that they’re finding PFAS in things like polar bears is because those are apex predators. So they’re eating animals that have eaten other animals that have eaten plants. It can really drive up the food chain and accumulate that way.
CHRISTINE: And we are also apex predators.
KATIE: Exactly. Exactly.
CHRISTINE: So we’re at the top and our concentrations could be higher too because of that.
KATIE: Exactly.
CHRISTINE: I know a lot of people who are concerned about non-stick coatings, for instance.
KATIE: Yes.
CHRISTINE: They want to eliminate all non-stick coatings in their cookware. They’re looking for rice cookers that don’t have non-stick coatings. They’re looking to replace all their skillets. This ingestion issue, like you’re saying, is it more an environmental issue with what you’re being exposed to in the environment? What is coming through your tap water versus the actual products that you’re interacting with in your home or in your daily life every day?
KATIE: Yeah. I mean, I think that the sources that I’ve spoken with would say it’s a combination. Any kind of exposure that might come from an individual product that you’re using is likely to be relatively low in comparison to potentially other pathways that would be better tackled through say regulation. But there is evidence that cookware can leach small amounts of PFAS chemicals. Same with other products. The bigger motivation behind phasing those out, I mean, I think it’s twofold.
I think on the one hand, it is a bigger environmental issue as well as an issue for the health of workers and people in neighboring communities to manufacturing to try to reduce the amount of PFAS that is being utilized for products and non-essential uses, basically. On the other hand, I think because we’re all exposed to these levels of PFAS regularly, it’s possible that reducing it where you can may have some impact on the amount of PFAS that you’re exposed to.
And like I said, scientists are still studying the interactions behind these chemicals and their impacts long-term. So it’s kind of more of a precautionary approach. And I think consumer demand is partially driving companies deciding to try to find other solutions to making things non-stick, making things water-repellent. Products are changing because of this. But basically products are a relatively small exposure, though it is still possible.
CHRISTINE: So to your earlier point about the dose makes the poison, if you’re being very, very cautious, eliminating the daily products you use is one way to help you reduce exposure. It may not be the biggest way to reduce exposure, but that’s going to help if that’s a real priority to you.
KATIE: Yeah. And I would say that it’s not something that needs to be done immediately or completely even because of that low risk that they pose. But I do think it’s something that’s important to consider when you’re going to re-buy something or replace something. When it comes to your overall environmental impact, it’s the more sustainable choice and likely a very safe choice to keep wearing that raincoat that predates the switch in Gore-Tex from a PFAS-based water-repellent to one that does not rely on PFAS.
CHRISTINE: We’ve covered a lot here so far, so let’s do a quick recap. PFAS is a class of chemicals that are used in a lot of applications. In industrial settings, and in a lot of consumer products. They’ve made their way into our environment —water, soil—and ultimately into our bodies. We ingest them or breathe them in, and they can have health risks. But by and large no one product that you’re using—say, a Teflon pan—is going to cause a huge risk on its own. It’s more about the additive accumulation over time of being exposed to these chemicals.
ROSIE: So PFAS are being phased out in many products as you’ve mentioned. What’s actually afoot? What’s happening?
KATIE: It depends on the specific industry and the location. We are seeing basically a mix of consumer demand, technological innovation and kind of good old-fashioned design creativity and also governmental regulation. It’s a real patchwork though. And it’s not that PFAS are being phased out of all products by any means, but we are seeing it here at Wirecutter in some really major product categories that we cover, including cookware, cosmetics, and textiles.
CHRISTINE: We’re going to take a quick break, but when we’re back, Katie, we are going to talk about some of the alternatives that are now out there that people might want to turn to instead. And whether any of these are actually any good, any of these alternatives. We’ll be right back.
ROSIE: Welcome back. Katie, here at Wirecutter, we had a crew of three reporters go out and research and test and then report back on how certain products are changing. I’m curious what new waterproofing non-stick coatings are being used and are these replacements without PFAS, are they any good?
KATIE: As always, the answer is it depends, right? But we were really interested in looking into three areas where PFAS have historically been starring in how the products perform; cookware, cosmetics and waterproof gear. It’s been really amazing actually to see since I started covering PFAS or following it, the dramatic drop in the number of products that you can even find and certainly that we recommend that have PFAS. When it comes to non-stick cookware, specifically frying pans, you can still buy PTFE pans. We do still review them in fact because they’re really affordable and they’re really good at what they do. But we also have lots of other alternatives. And one of those alternatives is ceramic coatings. I’m sure you guys have heard of it.
So Mace Dent Johnson took it upon themselves to test these pans because they’ve become so heavily marketed around being PFAS-free and they found that they actually aren’t really worth the money, but we certainly have other pans that you could use that are more durable and that are probably more sustainable in the long term.
CHRISTINE: Actually, I’m very confused about how ceramic creates a non-stick coating in the first place. So maybe you can define what this cookware is and what you guys thought about it after testing.
KATIE: Sure. So Mace inherited the non-stick pan guide. And as part of it, they were really hoping to be able to recommend a non-stick pan that did not rely on PTFE because of all of the concerns that we’ve outlined and also because our readers really were interested in that. And so they set about testing a bunch of these pans.
Ceramic is, it sounds a little bit different than what it actually is. It’s not like pottery. It’s a coating. I confess that I don’t know the full chemistry here, but I will say that whereas PTFE works so well at repelling oils and water and keeping food from sticking to it because of the strength and structure of its molecular bonds it’s basically … Mace describes it in their piece really well as like two centipedes like clasping hands. So they have no other hands to grab onto other molecules which can cause that sticking. With Sol-gel, which is the kind of technical name for ceramic coatings-
CHRISTINE: That is a ridiculous name. Sol-gel.
KATIE: Yeah. It works differently. So it’s a combination of the physical surface and within the molecular structure, there sometimes are these silicone oils that are included in that. So those two things combined are not as durable as PTFE coatings. Out of the box, ceramic pans performed pretty well. You’re not going to be able to compete with this kind of space age technology of PFAS, but it worked pretty well, the ceramic. The issue was in the repeated use.
So Mace found upon testing that things started sticking. They started eliminating pans. They whittled it down to kind of good enough. And then they were looking at reviews, they were thinking about the handling, all these other factors. And these pans are really expensive, but Mace found that they could not in good conscience recommend any of these pans, although they really wanted to because they didn’t last long enough for the price.
Their conclusion really was maybe we should kind of walk away from non-stick pans period. The PFAS ones, they’re durable enough for the price, but there are all these use limitations for them. You can’t heat them over 450 degrees because that might cause something called Teflon flu that can kill birds. It’s a temporary condition, but clearly not great. It can scratch really easily. It relies on these chemicals that have this whole slew of environmental drawbacks. And then the ceramic wasn’t working great either. And meanwhile, we know and our kitchen team endorses and relies on in their own lives, pans made from cast iron, made from stainless steel.
CHRISTINE: I think carbon steel is also one of our favorites at this point.
KATIE: Totally. And these are more durable and actually will … You can hand them down to your children if you want to. So this was an instance where we actually do have a replacement on the market ceramic coatings that is marketing itself as sort of an uncomplicated, quote unquote, “non-toxic solution” to PTFE.
A lot of these companies seem to have their hearts in the right place. They’re often motivated by a desire to have more transparency. But at the same time, maybe we’re searching for a solution that was kind of sold to us initially by Teflon and we don’t need to have non-stick pans. And I really am excited for people to read Mace’s piece because they go into the history of some of that advertising and talk about how really psychologically we can be convinced that we need certain things in the kitchen for convenience.
CHRISTINE: Okay, so if you are trying to eliminate Teflon/PTFE coatings in your kitchen, because you want to limit your exposure to PFAS and the associated health risks, we don’t love ceramic as an alternative for pans (thing you’re cooking on the stove), at least. It’s not durable, it won’t stay nonstick for long, it’s expensive. And there are other really good options–get the heirloom old stuff to cook on!
ROSIE: Another category we looked into is makeup. So Katie, how have PFAS been incorporated into the production of cosmetics?
KATIE: So makeup is actually a very different story than the cookware story. PFAS were used in makeup in a few ways for many years, keeping it resistant to sweat, tears, water, waterproofing, preventing smudging, making it more long-lasting. And it was also used to help enhance the texture. So like what they call the slip or adding shine. The FDA has a list of about 50 PFAS that are commonly or have historically been used in makeup. What we’ve found is that makeup is one of those areas where PFAS have disappeared from new formulas. That’s because of a couple of reasons. France, for example, has banned PFAS in cosmetics. There have been some state regulations coming through as well. So those two things have kind of pushed the beauty industry into finding different ways of getting those qualities.
And what we’ve found in our testing is that the new formulas, they’re not streaking. They’re not smearing any, truly not much differently than the other formulas. You might not even notice. So this is one of those things where the risk, probably, of absorbing PFAS through your skin is considered to be very low to begin with and makeup is increasingly not including PFAS in the formulations. You probably don’t need to do anything. And that’s really great news as a consumer.
Hannah Fry,e who wrote this piece, does go into some additional steps you can take if you really want to be extra cautious for personal reasons. And so if you do want to learn more about that, I would encourage you to check out her piece.
CHRISTINE: Okay, Katie, what about high performance fabrics? Things like Gore-Tex rain jackets, water resistant tents. What are the alternatives that are being introduced in this category?
KATIE: There’s kind of two things that are happening in waterproof gear. One is what I alluded to earlier, which is the PFAS-based durable water repellents are really getting phased out. They’re becoming harder and harder to buy. And the reason for that is a combination of this kind of technological ability to make water-repellent coatings with other means and California and New York, which are enormous markets, banned intentionally-added PFAS to clothing. And that has had a ripple effect on the clothing industry, especially in outdoor apparel.
Gore-Tex, which for many years relied on PFAS, its membrane now, it’s known as EPE, does not utilize PFAS and they seem to be performing about the same. There are some differences. They’re not as good at repelling stains and they do have a slightly different feel to them, but they are really good at repelling water, which is their primary job. But the second direction of waterproofing that we’re seeing is a real throwback.
So Alex Aciman who wrote this piece that’s part of this series, he got really excited about a technology that originated in the 40s, actually around the same time that PFAS were getting developed. It’s a fabric called Ventile. It’s an all cotton textile. It was reportedly developed under orders from Winston Churchill. It was used in pilot suits. Before Ventile was used in pilot suits, reportedly the survival of pilots who fell out of planes into water was 0%. And after they switched to Ventile, it went up to something like 80%. So that’s really dramatic.
And the reason why it works is because it’s a really densely woven cotton. It uses long staple cotton that makes it very strong and you can get a really tight weave. And that alone allows it to be very water resistant. It actually does absorb a little bit of water, but that causes the fibers to swell and it makes it less permeable. And so Alex tested some garments for this piece that are all Ventile and that are all cotton. One of them was a bucket hat. He filled it with water, put it on the table and nothing. So this stuff is really effective.
CHRISTINE: So if you’re in a big rainstorm, can you wear a jacket made out of this and you’ll stay dry?
KATIE: Yes. So Ventile and other kind of weave-based water-repellent textiles, they’ll still bead water. They’ll keep you dry. They kind of can get heavy because they do have that absorptive quality. And if you’re standing in pouring buckets of rain for hours, they might saturate, but they work really well. And I think this kind of speaks to a broader theme that experts in the outdoor industry have kind of told me and they’ve told Claire Wilcox who reviews a lot of outdoor gear at Wirecutter that some of this is about shifting our expectations around the performance of things and thinking about the problem that we’re trying to solve for. Do we really need to be wearing gear that’s great at helping you survive the most intensive conditions as you’re going to walk your dog or buy groceries? So thinking about what types of performance PFAS have made us think are necessary.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. We’re not all climbing Everest. I’m curious, what brands are making some of this Ventile? Who’s making this stuff at this point?
KATIE: So it’s an old technology, but we’re mostly seeing it now in sort of a trend in niche men’s wear brands. There are companies called Outlier, American Trench. These are sort of smaller boutiquey menswear brands that are using these to make things that look very recognizable as rain shells. Unfortunately, bad news right now is that they’re still quite expensive and that’s because they do rely on long staple cotton, which is a more expensive type of cotton. You might look at something that’s like $700 for example. I will say, Alex points this out in his piece that that’s still sort of on par with a really well-made raincoat from Patagonia or Arcteryx, for example.
ROSIE: So if someone has a non-stick pan, some old makeup, an old rain jacket that’s still in good shape, they don’t need to get rid of them.
KATIE: No, that’s right. The most sustainable thing to do is to keep the things that you have and continue to use them until it’s time to replace them. When it is time to replace them, knowing what we know about PFAS, you’ll probably either have two options. You can try to find something that doesn’t rely on PFAS coatings, or in certain categories like I’ve just described, you may not even have the choice to get something that has intentionally added PFAS. But this is really more about replacing the items when you need new ones.
ROSIE: Like your makeup. Replace your makeup if it’s expired.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. You should be replacing that.
ROSIE: That’s not a PFAS issue.
CHRISTINE: Or if your pan is scratched, if your non-stick pan is scratched, probably time to replace it.
KATIE: That’s right.
CHRISTINE: Katie, before we wrap, we ask all our guests one last question. What is the last thing that you bought that you really loved?
KATIE: I think the answer is that I got a new clock for my kitchen. It’s made by this company called Lemnos. They’re Japanese. It’s really beautiful to me. It’s very simple. It’s got a plywood face. So it has the warmth of natural wood and the hands are sort of like a matte chrome color, which matches the horrendous hardware in my rental apartment, but it kind of ties the room together to quote The Big Lebowski. So I’m loving it. And I also love that I don’t have to stare at a digital screen all the time to track when it’s time for me to join a meeting or record a podcast when I’m making my coffee.
CHRISTINE: I love that. And Katie, you used to be our home decor writer too. So I completely 1000% trust your judgment on this.
KATIE: Thank you, Christine.
CHRISTINE: All right. It was great to have you, Katie.
ROSIE: Thanks, Katie.
CHRISTINE: We’ll have you back soon.
KATIE: Thank you so much.
CHRISTINE: Rosie, do you now feel like you’re an expert on PFAS?
ROSIE: I certainly don’t feel like an expert, but I am taking away this idea that we don’t have to run out and replace everything that we think has PFAS in it in our homes. And not all product categories have replacements that at least Wirecutter recommends at this point.
CHRISTINE: Right, right. To that point, my takeaway is on an individual level and just as a society, we might need to start changing our expectations of the products we use. We have developed the most amazing technologies that can solve so many problems, but do you need a mountaineering jacket to walk your dog? Do you actually really need a non-stick skillet? Maybe there’s something else that you can use and learn how to use that is going to do the job and do what you need it to do.
ROSIE: You can find all the reporting we talked with Katie about today in our show notes, or you can find it on our website. There’s lots more to learn about all of these replacement options and of course more to learn about PFAS. Check it out. And thank you so, so much for listening.
The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by me, Rosie Guerin, and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pittman. Today’s episode was mixed by Katherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop, Rowan Niemisto, Katherine Anderson, and Diane Wong. Cliff Levy is Wirecutter’s deputy publisher and general manager. Ben Frumin is Wirecutter’s editor in chief.
CHRISTINE: I’m Christine Cyr Clisset.
ROSIE: And I’m Rosie Guerin. Thank you for listening.
ROSIE: Mine is I’m going to stop eating polar bear meat.
CHRISTINE: Stop eating polar bear meat already.
