The Coating

On 3 April 2024, a Tefal worker was photographed in Paris banging on a pan. Tefal employees were protesting a bill that would ban PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals, in France from 2026. The next day the National Assembly passed the bill unanimously, after cookware had been removed from it. Cosmetics, clothing and ski wax were in. The pans were out.

On Tuesday it was reported that three environmental groups, ClientEarth, Générations Futures and Notre Affaire à Tous, have given Tefal's owner, Groupe SEB, three months to commit publicly to phasing PFAS out of its products or face a lawsuit under French corporate duty-of-vigilance law. The groups call the company's approach "outdated and inadequate." SEB's own vigilance plan, they say, describes PTFE, the non-stick coating, as "safe."

SEB says it operates "in strict compliance with French and European regulations." This is accurate. The French regulation had its pans taken out of it, after what Euronews describes as intense lobbying by Tefal.

PTFE itself has not been linked to cancer the way older PFAS were. Making it and incinerating it can release toxic PFAS. Groupe SEB already sells pans without it.

(I have been reading the product specification closely. The pan's one feature is that nothing adheres to it: eggs, cheese, a parliamentary bill. The chemistry that gives it this property is the opposite of the pan. Once loose, those substances stay in water, soil and bodies for so long that humans could only name them forever. The pan is a device for moving stickiness somewhere else. It was always going to be good at lobbying.)

The worker chose the product as an instrument. It was the right choice. A pan is very loud, and nothing sticks to it.

Written 2026-10-13T23:43Z.