How does nonstick cookware work, and should you switch to ‘green’ pans?

With its sizzling, sputtering sound effects and heady aroma, frying bacon and eggs is a morning ritual many people enjoy. Especially when the juicy items slide easily onto your plate, leaving nothing behind in the skillet to scrape off or scrub clean. Many home cooks rely on nonstick pans for that kind of hassle-free meal making.

For about 70 years, coatings based on polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) have been the gold standard for nonstick cookware. The smooth, slippery coatings, known by brand names such as Teflon, harness PTFE’s exceptional resistance to chemical attack, corrosion, and heat.

But the waxy fluoropolymer belongs to the family of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), the “forever chemicals” that persist in the environment and are linked to cancer. PFAS face mounting scrutiny and regulations.

In January, Minnesota became the first US state to ban the sale of PFAS-containing products, including cookware. Other states are considering similar legislation, as is the European Union. France’s PFAS ban should take effect in 2026. But it excludes cookware because of pushback from the French cookware maker Tefal.

The Cookware Sustainability Alliance, an industry group, has sued Minnesota over its PFAS ban. The group argues that fluoropolymers are safe and that the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Food Safety Authority have approved them for food-contact applications.

But critics argue that the manufacture, use, and disposal of fluoropolymers create environmental and health hazards and that PTFE coatings simply do not belong in the kitchen.

So should cooks ditch their PTFE pans? And do the nonfluoropolymer alternatives that line market shelves have the same nonstick chops?

Food sticks to cookware via chemical bonds. Metals have high surface energy, which is the property responsible for how chemically sticky a surface is. Put foodstuffs in a metal pan and turn on the heat, and strong covalent bonds or weak intermolecular van der Waals interactions form between food molecules and the metal surface. The surface is also rough on the microscopic scale “so you’re filling in all the topography of the cookware with food,” says Kevin Golovin, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Toronto.

To make nonstick cookware, metal is dipped in or sprayed with a nonreactive material that fills the microscopic nooks and crannies on the surface and then solidifies to create a smooth shell.

PTFE is a nonstick wonder material because it is a long chain of carbon atoms, each bonded to two fluorine atoms. The strong carbon-carbon and carbon-fluorine bonds form an inert coating that does not react with food molecules. So food molecules can stick only weakly to a PTFE coating via van der Waals forces, Golovin says. The coatings also repel oil and water, so the liquids simply slide around on it.

Controversy around PTFE cookware safety started simmering more than two decades ago, when PFAS risks came into the limelight. The concern was about the use of the PFAS molecule perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), which at the time served as a surfactant and polymerization aid to make PTFE coatings. The resulting coatings contained residual traces of the molecule.

But after PFOA’s link to cancer and other health conditions came to light, PTFE makers phased it out in 2012. So nonstick cookware being sold now should be PFOA-free, says Steve Burns, spokesperson for the Cookware Safety Alliance. “Folks who are looking to ban nonstick cookware now are seeking to right the wrongs of the past.”

Unlike small PFAS molecules made of 4–12 carbon atoms that dissolve in water and cross biological membranes, fluoropolymers such as PTFE contain hundreds of carbon atoms. That molecular heft makes them stable, insoluble, inert, nontoxic, and safe for nonstick cookware, Burns says.

Gillian Miller, a senior scientist at the nonprofit Ecology Center, says that PTFE coatings are probably a lower PFAS exposure hazard than other sources for the average person, but are not necessarily inert. The problem is that overheating and scratches break the molecule’s long carbon chain. PTFE degrades when it’s heated above 260 °C, releasing smaller PFAS molecules into air and food. A 2022 study showed that a crack in the coating released thousands of PTFE particles.

Hours of exposure to PTFE fumes can lead to “Teflon flu,” a temporary condition with flu-like symptoms that has been studied by medical researchers. The fumes are also fatal to birds. But cases of such effects are uncommon, and it is unclear whether exposure from regular use harms human health. “The amounts might be low and not a concern, but there’s no simple answer,” Miller says.

To assess safety, it’s important to look at the entire product life cycle. Fluoropolymer makers have switched from PFOA to other fluorinated surfactants such as GenX, but the toxicity of those new compounds is also being questioned. The problem is that making fluoropolymers requires the use of PFAS molecules with unknown toxicity risks and these PFAS are responsible for decades of ongoing air and water pollution, Miller says. “If you ignore that and say we made this inert polymer, you completely ignore the manufacturing impact.”

As the PFAS safety debate reaches its boiling point, customers are seeking alternatives to PTFE coatings. And companies are delivering. The most common Teflon alternative on the market now is “ceramic” cookware.

The label is a bit of a misnomer. Conventional ceramics, the stuff of vases and tiles, are made by fusing together powders of inorganic materials like silicon dioxide. Ceramic coatings borrow the term because they also contain inorganic particles and have an enamel-like appearance.

Formulations vary, but generally “it’s a siloxane-based network with a lot of methyl groups on the surface,” Golovin says. If you can’t use carbon-fluorine building blocks, then the next best choice for imparting chemical inertness is the methyl group, he says.

Manufacturers typically make ceramic coatings via a sol-gel process. They disperse nanoparticles of minerals such as silicon dioxide, silicon carbide, and titanium dioxide in a solvent, where they form a 3D gel network. Then they combine the gel along with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) resins and silane additives, apply the mixture to a metal surface, and cure it. The silane helps PDMS link strongly to metals, creating a hard, smooth, liquid-repelling coating.

Users often complain that ceramic coatings lose their nonstick property sooner than PTFE does. Scientific reviews are mixed. One 2024 study found that prolonged heating above 250 °C altered the internal structures of both PTFE- and ceramic-coated aluminum pans, but that ceramic cookware remained stronger and better resisted heat and mechanical wear.

In a more recent study, which is currently available as a preprint, researchers repeatedly cooked pancakes using a sticky batter; in terms of stickiness and wear resistance, Teflon outperformed commercial ceramic coatings, but two ceramic coatings came close.

Golovin says that “ceramic” can be a misleading marketing term. “I’ve seen pans that advertise a ceramic coating, but it’s made of PFAS attached to some ceramic material.” Manufacturers can label these products as “Teflon-free” or “PFOA-free,” but they still have PFAS. The best bet for consumers seeking PFAS-free nonstick pans is to look for the label “fluorine-free,” he says.

Of course, using nonstick pans isn’t the only way to cook. Restaurant chefs rely on pans made of stainless steel, carbon steel, or good old cast iron because they can handle heavy use and metal utensils. Those pans require nuanced cooking and maintenance techniques such as preheating and seasoning, and they can be more expensive. But, Miller says, “from an overall environmental standpoint, an uncoated pan is a good choice because it can last decades, whereas any nonstick pan will become trash a lot sooner.”