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Choose two categories from the same family. The same properties, equal visual weight, sources next to the claims they support.
STRUCTURED COMPARISON
Choose two categories from the same family. The same properties, equal visual weight, sources next to the claims they support.
Cookware
The non-stick property comes from a layer of polytetrafluoroethylene. In a direct experiment coated cookware introduced microplastics into the food and non-plastic cookware did not. The work calls the consequences of ingesting microplastics unclear.
The release of particles itself is measured by a direct experiment comparing coated and uncoated cookware. What ingesting microplastics means for health the work calls unclear outright — and the platform repeats that rather than filling the gap in.
All the figures for nickel and chromium release come from one work, and it is more than ten years old — the platform marks it as stale. No later measurements of the same subject were found. The reference against which those figures are judged is, by contrast, current: the 2020 agency assessment rests on more than 47,000 occurrence measurements.
The review describes PTFE as a polymer of high chemical stability used in everything from medical devices and clothing to cables and filtration; it accounts for about 60% of the global fluoropolymer market. The platform gives no figures for coating thickness or the substrate beneath: no measured source for them was found.
On 316L steel, what is usually only described has been measured: the protective film is bi-layered, and the share of chromium and molybdenum within it grows. The measurement avoided any contact with air during transfer, so the film was studied as it had formed in solution.
The review names temperature and ageing of the coating as circumstances affecting particle release. The experiment showed that wear is not the whole story: both new and old coated cookware produced a significant increase in microplastics.
In the experiment a food simulant went through heating, cooling, mixing, slicing and storage. Both new and old coated cookware significantly increased microplastic content; the particles were polytetrafluoroethylene, polyethylene and polypropylene, ranging from 13 to 318 micrometres. A 2025 review across many works speaks of thousands to millions of particles per single use.
Counted for this table only, not for the whole site.
The comparison runs on what the pan adds to the food. In a direct experiment, where the same food simulant went through heating, cooling, mixing, slicing and storage, non-stick coated cookware introduced microplastics — both new and old, in particles from 13 to 318 micrometres — while non-plastic cookware introduced none at all. That is a measured zero, not an absence of data. At the same time the work itself calls the consequences of ingesting microplastics unclear, and steel has a transfer of its own: in an acidic medium it releases nickel and chromium. The rows describe what ends up in the food, and the limits of what is known about it.
FREQUENTLY EXPLORED
The resistance comes not from the iron but from a chromium-enriched oxide film on the surface — shown by direct surface measurements on 316L food-grade steel. The film is not absolute: in an acidic medium nickel and chromium pass from the steel into the food.
Most is released from new cookware; with each successive cooking cycle release falls and settles at a steady level after roughly the sixth. Long cooking increases release: over 20 hours nickel rose 34-fold and chromium about 35-fold relative to sauce cooked without steel. Different grades of steel give different amounts.
In the same experiment non-plastic cookware introduced no microplastics into the food simulant at all — a measured zero, not an absence of data. The caveat: the work divides cookware into plastic and non-plastic and does not name a particular grade of steel.
Evidence reviewed: September 3, 2026
Sources are reviewed by the CONTRAST editorial team. External links open in a new tab.