The seven best non-toxic cooking pans in the US, tested in a food lab

By Rachel Sherman, Faustina Boakye, Thea Bertneski, Dorothea West, Jonathan Bush, Cricket Lowell and Jonathan Deutsch | The Guardian | February 21, 2026

Read the full article by Rachel Sherman, Faustina Boakye, Thea Bertneski, Dorothea West, Jonathan Bush, Cricket Lowell and Jonathan Deutsch (The Guardian)

"So-called non-toxic pans are often under a microscope. If you go down an internet rabbit hole about “toxic cookware,” you’ll find scary phrases about heavy metals, chemical coatings and something called polymer flume fever. It’s enough to make you side-eye the skillet you use every morning.

What’s actually going on? At the Drexel Food Lab, we investigate questions like these. When we started our search for the best non-toxic pans, we immediately reached out to our best colleague for defining toxicity: Dr Caroline Schauer, head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University.

“In chemistry and health contexts, a material is considered toxic [to people] if it can cause damage to organs or increase the risk of disease,” she said. Nonstick coatings are typically fine on their own, but they can release chemicals at high heat. Some of those are Pfas, PFOA, BPA and PTFE, otherwise known as “forever chemicals” that have been linked to health problems. When these coatings are heated to temperatures higher than 650F (343C), they can also release fumes that, if inhaled, can cause flu-like symptoms."