Will cooking fumes generated while cooking with non-stick cookware harm people or animals, especially pet birds?
Fumes from overheated non-stick coatings are no more harmful to people than fumes from overheated cooking fats, such as oil, butter or margarine. DuPont non-stick coatings have undergone exhaustive studies at the Haskell Laboratory for Toxicology and Industrial Medicine. The United States Food and Drug Administration has found them acceptable for conventional kitchen use, as have health regulatory agencies throughout the world. There have been billions of pots and pans coated with DuPont non-stick coatings sold around the world, and DuPont knows of no serious, chronic or acute health problems related to their use. Cookware with DuPont non-stick coatings can be heated continuously at temperatures up to approximately 500 F (260 C) — well above the temperatures required for frying and baking. In cases where the non-stick coating is grossly overheated (any food would have long been burned to an inedible state at this point), fumes may produce temporary flu-like symptoms. There are no long
