Is That Newfangled Cookware Safe? 
by Dale Blumenthal 

    It's twice as hard as stainless steel, it conducts heat 28 times faster 
than glass, and it's nonstick for life. Anodized aluminum this new material 
is just one of the many new inventions that have revolutionized the cookware
industry in the past 10 years.
    Crock-pots cook dinner while you're at work, plastic coatings make the
perfect omelet child's play, and now, with coated anodized aluminum, you can
cook cheese to death without scratching the pan.

                                 Is It Safe?
    Questions about safety, however, have accompanied the introduction of 
new types of cookware. Do scratches on a nonstick coated pan mean that we?ve
scraped a toxic material into our perfect omelet? Does aluminum from pots 
and pans leach into the food we eat and cause health problems? Are there
precautions that should be taken when cooking with copper-clad pans? Do 
glazed crock-pots contain dangerous amounts of lead?
    Regulating these products also presents some unusual issues for the Food
and Drug Administration.  You won't find a regulation anywhere on the books 
that specifically addresses cookwares,  says John Thomas, of the division of
regulatory guidance at FDA?s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
But, Thomas adds, when a type of cookware raises safety concerns, FDA gets
involved. 
    Chemicals that migrate from cookware into food are considered food
additives (substances that become a component of a food or otherwise affect 
its characteristics) and are therefore under FDA's jurisdiction. FDA
addresses safety concerns about housewares on a case-by-case
basis.
    For instance, after a California family suffered acute lead poisoning 
from drinking orange juice stored in a ceramic pitcher bought in Mexico, FDA
initiated a formal compliance action in 1971 limiting the amount of lead
that may leach from products used to hold food. In taking this action, the
agency relied on food additive provisions that prohibit adulterating a food 
by adding poisonous and deleterious substances to the food. Since then, FDA 
has tightened restrictions on lead. (See  An Unwanted Souvenir: Lead in 
Ceramic Ware,  in the December 1989-January 1990 issue of FDA Consumer.)
    In 1974, FDA proposed an amendment to the food additive regulations that
would require housewares manufacturers to file a food additive petition if
they planned to use certain substances in their products. (Exceptions would 
be made if there was no migration of a substance to the food, or if the 
substance was already generally recognized as safe by FDA.) 
    Although this housewares proposal has never been finalized, it
nevertheless has served as an advisory to manufacturers, says FDA food
additives consumer safety officer Kenneth Falci, Ph.D. For instance, says 
Falci, many nonstick products are coated with a plastic that is regulated 
and approved as a food contact substance by FDA.
    Following is a review of materials in popular use in cookware today.
This review may serve as a guide to safe cooking. 

                                  Aluminum
    More than half (52 percent) of all cookware sold today is made of 
aluminum, according to Cookware Manufacturers Association executive vice
president Paul Uetzmann. But most of these aluminum pots and pans are coated
with nonstick finishes or treated using a process that alters and hardens 
the structure of the metal. 
    In the 1970s, Canadian researchers reported that the brains of
Alzheimer?s disease victims contained abnormally high levels of aluminum. 
The studies stirred a controversy about whether aluminum is the cause or
result of the disease. At the same time, many concerned consumers discarded 
their natural aluminum cookware.
    Stephen Levick, M.D., from Yale University School of Medicine in New
Haven, Conn., wrote in a letter to the editor of the New England Journal of 
Medicine,  out with my corroded aluminum pots.
    John Koning, M.D., from Riverside General Hospital in Corona, Calif., 
responded,  most ingested aluminum is recovered in the feces, and much more 
is ingested by a person taking antacids than one could ever leach from an 
aluminum pan. Dr. Levick has thrown away his pots and pans to no avail.?
    Researchers still are investigating the connection between aluminum and 
Alzheimer's disease. But according to Creighton Phelps, Ph.D., director of
medical and scientific affairs at the Alzheimer's Association, much recent
data support the theory that brains already damaged by Alzheimer?s disease
may permit entry of abnormally high levels of aluminum. 
    As FDA and researchers point out, aluminum is ubiquitous. It is the 
third most abundant element in the earth's crust (after oxygen and silicon).
It is in air, water and soil, and ultimately in the plants and animals we 
eat.
    Many over-the-counter medicines also contain aluminum. According to the 
Aluminum Association, one antacid tablet can contain 50 milligrams of 
aluminum or more, and it is not unusual for a person with an upset stomach
to consume more than 1,000 milligrams, or 1 gram, of aluminum per day. A
buffered aspirin tablet may contain about 10 to 20 milligrams of aluminum.
    In contrast, in a worst-case scenario,  a person using uncoated aluminum
pans for all cooking and food storage every day would take in an estimated
3.5 milligrams of aluminum daily. Aluminum cookware manufacturers warn that 
storing highly acidic or salty foods such as tomato sauce, rhubarb, or
sauerkraut in aluminum pots may cause more aluminum than usual to enter the 
food. (Also, undissolved salt and acidic foods allowed to remain in an
aluminum pot will cause pitting on the pot?s surface.) However, aluminum
intake is virtually impossible to avoid, and the amount leached in food from
aluminum cookware is relatively minimal, according to Thomas. 
    FDA reviewed existing data because of consumer concern and formally 
announced in May 1986 that the agency has no information at this time that
the normal dietary intake of aluminum, whether from naturally occurring 
levels in food, the use of aluminum cookware, or from aluminum food 
additives or drugs, is harmful. 

                              Anodized Aluminum 
    One reason that aluminum became popular for cookware is that it is an 
excellent heat conductor. Heat spreads quickly and evenly across the bottom,
up the sides, and across the cover to completely surround the food. 
    Now cookware manufacturers have developed a process for treating
aluminum that retains the heat conductivity properties of the metal, but
changes aluminum in other ways. The process, called anodization, involves a 
series of electrochemical baths that thicken the oxide film that forms
naturally on aluminum. This supplemental coating hardens the metal, making
it more scratch resistant. Food barely sticks on the hard, smooth surface of
this altered aluminum, making it easier to clean. 
    Commercial Aluminum Company, the manufacturer of Calphalon, a 
best-selling brand of anodized aluminum cookware, claims that a final stage 
in the anodization process seals the aluminum, preventing any leaching into 
food. Anodized aluminum cookware doesn't react to acidic foods, so these
pots and pans are top choices for cooking rhubarb and sauces with tomato, 
wine, and lemon juice.

                              Nonstick Coatings 
    Before anodized aluminum made its cookware debut, nonstick coatings 
stirred a mini-revolution in the American kitchen. Teflon, for instance, is 
a trademark for a tough, nonporous material called perfluorocarbon resin
that permits cooking without the use of fats. It was first discovered by
chance in 1938 and then hurried into wartime production for use in radar
systems, in which other less durable substances had failed. 
    The noncorrosive properties of this stable plastic material made it a 
natural for cookware. In 1960, FDA approved its use for food contact
surfaces, and cookware manufacturers began turning out pots and pans with a 
coating that cleaned quickly and easily and that required less fat for
nonstick cooking. One of the first nonstick coatings to be applied to 
housewares, Teflon soon became a household word.
    Fry pans were the first cookware marketed with this nonstick finish.
Now, says the Cookware Manufacturers Association, almost every cookware and 
bakeware item is available with a nonstick finish. There are griddles,
saucepans, casseroles, muffin pans, cookie sheets, Dutch ovens, egg 
poachers, cake pans, deep fryers, and waffle bakers.
    Because nonstick finishes may be scratched by sharp or rough-edged
kitchen tools, manufacturers recommend using plastic or wooden utensils.
Abrasive scouring pads or cleansers should not be used to clean them. Even
so, Tom Brown, an official in FDA's food additives section, notes that while
nonstick pans do abrade with hard use and particles may chip off, these 
particles would pass unchanged through your body and pose no health hazard. 
    When heated for long periods at high temperatures, the resin decomposes.
However, a 1959 study, conducted before FDA approved the material for use in
food processing equipment, showed that the toxicity of fumes given off by 
the coated pan on dry heating was less than that of fumes given off by
ordinary cooking oils. The study, conducted by the Haskell Laboratory for 
Toxicology and Industrial Medicine, compared effects of inhaling of fumes 
from resin-coated pans that were overheated?for four hours at 250 degrees 
Celsius (482 degrees Farenheit) with corn oil, peanut oil, and butter.
    The investigators, J. Wesley Clayton, Ph.D., and Gayle E. Raynesford, 
also explored the possibility that long-term use of the coated pan also 
increases the chance of food contamination with the resin. Newly coated 
resin pans, an aged pan (a pan that had been heated at 250 degrees Celsius
(482 degrees Farenheit) for 159 hours), and a pan that had received 
two-and-one-half years of domestic use were used to fry hamburger meat. 
    Researchers compared the results with those from frying hamburger in an 
uncoated aluminum pan, measuring levels of fluoride, which serve as an index
to Teflon residue. (Aluminum contains traces of fluoride as impurities.) An 
analysis showed basically the same amount of fluoride in the hamburger
cooked in the new resin-coated pan as in the one cooked in the plain
aluminum pan. Slightly more fluoride but well within safe limits showed up
in the hamburgers fried in the heat-aged pan and the old pan. 
    Cooking enthusiasts now are hailing Silverstone and Excalibur nonstick
coatings, which are made of three layers of the same plastic used on Teflon 
and other perfluorocarbon resin-coated pans. This material is extremely 
durable, and so inert (meaning it will not migrate) that it is used in
artificial arteries, hip joint replacement parts, and other surgical
implants. As with Teflon, however, it will emit fumes when overheated. Out
of caution, DuPont refuses to license housewares manufacturers to produce 
from Silverstone burner bibs (the pans that are placed under stove burners) 
because these pans can become extremely hot.
    The newest rage, says a chef and salesperson in the cookwares section at
an exclusive Washington, D.C., department store, is a brand that combines 
hard anodized aluminum with a nonstick coating. A Los Angeles Times food
critic reported last year that when testing such a pan, he toasted cheese to
death until it was crusty and browned and cooked a whole egg until it was 
picture perfect. . . . Cleaning was a cinch.  The Washington, D.C., chef
says that coated anodized aluminum is nonstick for life.

                               Stainless Steel
    Consumers who don't buy aluminum pots and pans usually buy stainless
steel. Uetzmann says that stainless steel accounts for 43 percent of
cookware sold today. Stainless steel cookware and bakeware is exceptionally 
durable. Says Uetzmann,  Its attractive finish won't corrode or tarnish 
permanently, and its hard, tough, nonporous surface is resistant to wear. 
    Like other steels, stainless steel is an alloy a combination of iron and
other metals. Unlike other steels, however, it contains at least 11 percent 
chromium. This chromium makes the steel stainless all the way through.
    According to the Cookware Manufacturers Association, stainless steel may
also contain other elements, such as nickel, molybdenum or titanium. These
materials can contribute special hardness, high temperature resistance, and 
resistance to scratching and corrosion to the finished stainless steel alloy. 
    As stainless steel does not conduct heat evenly, most stainless steel 
cookware is made with copper or aluminum bottoms. Manufacturers caution 
against allowing acidic or salty foods to remain in stainless steel for long
periods. Although there are no known health hazards from leaching of the
metal, undissolved salt will pit steel surfaces.

                                   Copper 
    Copper is called a noble metal by both cooks and chemists, but for
different reasons. Noble to a chemist means that the metal does not corrode 
easily. To a cook, it means magnificent in appearance. To both, copper fills
the bill. (See Cookware as a Source of Additives, in the March 1982 issue of
FDA Consumer.)
    Copper is an excellent conductor of heat, especially good for 
top-of-range cooking. Cooks often prefer copper cookware for delicate sauces
and foods that must be cooked at precisely controlled temperatures. 
    However, copper cookware is usually lined with tin or stainless steel.
FDA's Thomas says that the agency cautions against using unlined copper for 
general cooking because the metal is relatively easily dissolved by some
foods with which it comes in contact and, in sufficient quantities, can 
cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
    The toxic effects of copper are well documented. I. Herbert Scheinberg, 
M.D., one of the nation?s experts on copper toxicity and professor of 
medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, cites a classic case 
reported by the New York Department of Health in the 1970s. Children
attending a movie matinee bought soda from the type of vending machine that 
drops a cup and fills it with carbonated water from one side and syrup from 
another. The check valve for dispensing the carbonated water was made of
copper. Overnight, a significant amount of copper had dissolved into the
carbonated water. The children became ill from drinking the soda
contaminated with copper salts. 

                                  Cast Iron 
    The all-time classic is cast-iron cookware. It's been with us for nearly
3,000 years, since it was first used in China to cook rice, and remains a 
staple among the glamorous additions in cookware stores. Cast iron is 
strong, inexpensive, and it?s an even conductor of heat for browning, frying
and baking foods. 
    Cooking with cast iron also provides a source of an important nutrient. 
Some nutritionists suggest that foods cooked in unglazed cast iron contain
twice or more the amount of iron they would contain otherwise.
    Cast-iron utensils should be handled differently from other utensils. To
prevent rust damage, the inside of cast iron cookware should be coated
frequently with unsalted cooking oil. It should not be washed with strong 
detergents or scoured and should be wiped dry immediately after rinsing.

                        Ceramic and Enameled Cookware 
    In 1830, a Bohemian craftsman found he could create a permanent, smooth,
glassy surface on cast iron by finishing it with porcelain enamel. This 
highly durable glass is stain and scratch resistant and does not pick up
food odors. 
    Today, enamel-coated iron and steel provide colorful as well as 
practical additions to the cook's collection. Cookware made properly of 
enamel on these metals is safe to cook with, says Edward A. Steele, acting
director, executive operations staff, in FDA's Center for Food Safety and 
Applied Nutrition. Steele says that because of the high firing temperatures 
required, lead which could present a safety concern is not used in the
enamel for this cookware. 
    Lead, however, is used in some glazes for slow-cooking pots 
(crock-pots). But, in tests done in 1987, FDA found that the amount of lead 
that leached into food from these pots did not exceed FDA standards. (See An
Unwanted Souvenir: Lead in Ceramic Ware, in the December 1989-January 1990
issue of FDA Consumer.) 
    At the same time (1971) that FDA restricted the amount of lead permitted
to leach from housewares, the agency also established limits for cadmium
after it learned that this potentially toxic substance was sometimes
contained in the red, yellow and orange pigments used to color the interior 
of enamel cookware. In the mid-1970s, FDA inspectors discovered excessive 
cadmium levels in imported cookware and prohibited these products from
entering the country. 
    Cadmium was used mostly by foreign manufacturers. But, says Steele, 
manufacturers have discontinued its use, and consumers today are not in 
danger of cadmium poisoning from enamelware marketed today. 

                           Best Choice Your Choice
    The best choice of a pot or pan depends upon whom you ask and what you
want. A North Carolina father of three preteens relies on his nonstick fry
pan to create perfect Sunday morning pancakes with no mess with use of
little butter. A New York Times food critic features anodized aluminum in 
his search for a better saut} pan.  A member of a Maryland food cooperative 
says she could never part with her familiar and durable cast-iron cookware. 
    The variety of pots and pans today offers something for everyone. And,
the best part is that all the different materials discussed in this article 
can safely serve the needs of consumers.

Dale Blumenthal is a staff writer for FDA Consumer.