From the second link: "In all honesty, we suspect that the risks with both types of nonstick cookware are low, and you would probably benefit more from focusing on risks in your drinking water and food supply (for example). "
Why would you add an additional risk if you can just avoid it to begin with?
I think pointing to "we don't know" as if it's equal to "it does not matter" is not good policy. A better one is "better safe than sorry" from my point of view.
As someone who has had a (university clinic, lab values supported) heavy metal poisoning diagnosis, I had positive effects of chelation (DMPS, DMSA, some ALA) long after the clinical case was closed, i.e. for measured excretion values way below where a treatment would be started (at the start it was high). My doctor (a researcher mostly) supported me continuing to take them, but he was clear that we had left the area supported by clinical studies. Because now we were in an area where studies were just too hard or even impossible, which didn't mean it was all gone and that the chelators were useless.
That's because we have no methods - apart from large-number statistics based studies which only tell you something about populations but don't help any one concrete individual because there is no way to tell which part of the large-number based statistics an individual belongs to - to say for sure what is going on. And when you get a population level result, such as "there is no safe level of lead exposure", you still don't have anything for individuals, such statistics only support big policies but not individual treatments.
Of course the jury is still out - like it is for pretty much all long term low level effects of anything, especially in the messy real world. Even if you performed an unethical study and found an effect of one thing by careful exposure of some people to something you still would not know the effect of many things. I once read a study (PubMed), a standard LD (lethal dose) toxicity study of heavy metals on rats, with mercury and lead, where when they were done with each individually they tried combining those two metals. Toxicity shot up through the roof, a tiny fraction of the amount needed to kill half the rats now was enough to kill almost all of them.
I've also slowly shifted to cast iron and stainless steel cooking ware, but they are objectively more effort to clean and maintain properly than anything with "teflon" or other similar coating.
Burning in the patina and keeping it intact is more effort and requires people being more aware about what they are doing when washing dishes.
> I've also slowly shifted to cast iron and stainless steel cooking ware, but they are objectively more effort to clean and maintain properly than anything with "teflon" or other similar coating.
I do not believe this is true.
I started cooking with various cast iron pans about a decade ago - initially I was dubious, and it took longer to season in the Lodge than the Le Creuset (both around the 20cm size, normally used on gas). Now they're equally seasoned, and cleaning is typically some hot water, ideally the same night they were used, maybe a very mild detergent, with a nylon scrubbing pad. If I don't get to them until the next day, I may need to run some hot water over them for five minutes, but that's rare.
OTOH I've got a number of non-stick coating woks, that I treat with great care, but are (in the same time period) looking a bit crusty / scratched, despite only using silicon / plastic / wooden utensils, and never running them above a medium heat. That is, treating them much more cautiously than I treat the cast iron.
Granted, I don't do, say, omelettes in a cast iron -- but herb encrusted meat, at very high temperatures, which would challenge a non-stick (teflon or similar) takes about 30s to clean out of the cast iron if I get to it later that night.
If you gonna do dishes, most people gonna use dishwasher soap, particularly if somebody is doing the dishes who doesn't even have a clue about seasoned pans.
But afaik that's a big no-no as it will also wash away to seasoning, that's why usually dry methods like rubbing baking soda/coarse salt are recommended to clean nasty spots without destroying too much of the patina.
Add in the oiling requirement, once finished with cleaning, and that's already two steps required that most people who are only casually into cooking don't really know about.
> I was dubious, and it took longer to season in the Lodge than the Le Creuset
Ain't the Lodge one supposed to be pre-seasoned? At least that's what mine said, I still seasoned it.
Honestly, all those rules about caring for cast iron are kind of nonsense. I clean mine with dish detergent all the time. I'll oil a pan before storing if it doesn't get used often, but for frequently used pans, the cooking process is enough to keep them seasoned.
I got a lot of misinformation about how to maintain an iron skillet. Internet cooking blog trolls had me convinced I should never use soap or else I'd have to scrub it down to bare metal, soak it in oil, and bake it at 500 to restore that precious nonstick coating. Turns out that's bunk and all I needed to do after cooking was wash it, dry it, and spread a little oil over it.
I cook in titanium pots. They are marketed to ultralight hikers, and are mostly too small, but you can find ones large enough for kitchen cooking. It's easier to clean than iron or steel, but not as easy as teflon. The nice thing is, unlike coated pans, you can use copper wool on titanium.
It was a Calphalon stainless steel skillet that I ruined. The bottom warped, and it never sat flush on the stove again after that.
I have used cast iron in the past, but living with people who don't know about keeping it seasoned means I come back to find it has gone through the dishwasher or been scrubbed with a brillo pad. I live near the ocean, and without the seasoning later, cast iron develops surface rust rather quickly.
You can still ruin them (ask me how I know)... If you use too intense heat right from the start, this is only a problem with induction. Or if heat surface does not fully cover the bottom of the pan the center will bulge. Probably some heavy hammering would fix that but for most homes that's as good as ruined. Basically start slow and match heat surface to pot/pan size.
