Is my Dunelm dish killing us ?

morganlefay

I have a lovely Dunelm (so, not very expensive) gratin dish which looks like a le Creuset but was MUCH cheaper. It has a non-stick black lining which was great to start with, but which is now slowly flaking off. I imagine we are eating it without realising it. Do you think this is dangerous and that I should chuck the dish ? I'm very fond of it so I keep hanging on to it but I really don't want to kill us !

moneyistooshorttomention

I doubt anyone on here can give you a definitive scientific answer.

However, I used to have conventional non-stick saucepans etc and soon realised that the non-stick lining was chipping off in bits (even if I bought better quality ones). Obviously those bits would be coming off into the food. Obviously I would end up eating those bits.

I chucked them out and now my cookware consists basically of:

- stainless steel saucepans and pressure cooker

- ceramic or cast iron casserole dishes

- my frying pan/omelette pan are ceramic-coated (darn it - aluminium base - so I monitor in case I spot bits of the ceramic coating coming off. However, I just couldnt find ceramic-coated with stainless steel base at the time and it's still a problem to get them)

- I finally found a wok with ceramic coating the other day and a stainless steel base. Promptly bought it - as I'd been minus a wok for literally years after throwing last one out.

System

I had a similar problem with a Woolworths frying pan (black non-stick coating coming off in the food). I stopped using it, and bought a new pan. I don't think it can be good for you, even if the company claim it to be 'food safe'!

monnagran

I don't know about non stick s aucepans but I have an old friend who died recently aged 97. She bought up her family in the forties and fifties and was a great cook. No helpful electric whisks or processors then but she made wonderful cakes with her trusty wooden spoon. I well remember being in her kitchen while she vigorously beat sugar into butter and marvelling at the shape of the said spoon. The bowl was thin and looked as though it had been cut in half. Apparently that was not the first wooden spoon she had worn out.
Her family reckon that they must have eaten half a tree over the years.

No visible effects so far.

x

moneyistooshorttomention

I'm not seeing whether above post is meant to be a joke or no???

comeandgo

Wood is natural and won't kill you. Black paint is not natural and not something I'd like to be ingesting.

moneyistooshorttomention

monnagran wrote: »

I don't know about non stick s aucepans but I have an old friend who died recently aged 97. She bought up her family in the forties and fifties and was a great cook. No helpful electric whisks or processors then but she made wonderful cakes with her trusty wooden spoon. I well remember being in her kitchen while she vigorously beat sugar into butter and marvelling at the shape of the said spoon. The bowl was thin and looked as though it had been cut in half. Apparently that was not the first wooden spoon she had worn out.
Her family reckon that they must have eaten half a tree over the years.

No visible effects so far.

x

I didn't think this post was a "tongue in cheek - joke" one - but I wasnt quite sure....:cool:

monnagran

No joke. The elements of several wooden spoons had obviously been incorporated into cakes over the years and thus ingested by the consumers thereof.
I will allow for a slight exaggeration. I don't think that it actually amounted to half a tree.

jadziad

comeandgo wrote: »

Wood is natural and won't kill you. Black paint is not natural and not something I'd like to be ingesting.

I'm sorry, the term"natura" should not be used when deciding whether any quantity of something is safe or harmful.

Here are some natural things that are not safe:
- Asbestos
- Plants: water hemlock (cicutoxin), deadly nightshade (atropine and scopolamine), white snakeroot (trematol), castor beans (ricin), rosary pea (abrin), oleander (oleandrin and neriine)
- Mercury - high concentrations in some fish
- Fugu (puffer fish)
- Lots of mushrooms

In addition, too much of essential stuff is possible as well; there are a few recorded deaths from water intoxicatoin - see Wikipedia.

Always check scientific research papers if anyone has a concern about anything in particular.

kboss2010

Non-stick pans contain a chemical called perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) which several scientific studies have found to be a carcinogen (cancer-causing compound) in animals at high dosages. It's present in many everyday objects so non-stick coatings aren't your only source of it by a long way & undamaged non-stick coatings are coated so they shouldn't release PFOA into food.

While eating the odd flake probably won't do you much harm, the UK govt does class it as "harmful" & it is regulated in drinking water.

Basically, the guidelines suggest, while the link between cancer & PFOA in humans hasn't been proven to cause adverse health effects, you should bin any damaged non-stick coatings just to be on the safe side.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pfos-and-pfoa-properties-incident-management-and-toxicology


Hope that helps!
- your friendly moneysaving analytical chemist :-)

Geoff1963

As the coating flakes off, it will progressively become a "stick" pan ; and the base metal is probably less good than those used for normal pans.

As to the harmful effect, it rather depends on if the flaking occurs while cooking or washing. One option might be to give it a good scrape out with a metal scrubber each time, to take off anything vaguely loose ; but once you have an edge, that is going to wear very fast.