Is That Newfangled Cookware Safe?

by Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

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.

About the Author

www.fda.gov
FDA is A United States government body that oversees medical devices, including contact lenses, intraocular lenses, excimer lasers and eyedrops. In the US, these products must be approved by the FDA before they can be marketed.