UKC

Dan Bailey indulges in a bit of high end backpacking luxury with a selection of lightweight, sturdy and beautifully designed pots and dinnerware from Sea to Summit's new Frontier range. 

Read more

A little inaccurate on the Teflon in your review. In its inert form i.e. as a coating it’s about as harmless as you can get. It’s only when superheated at above 260c and when it breaks down giving off fumes, does it become noxious and harmful.

Aluminum cookware tends to be anodised to make it tougher and more resistant to damage. As for aluminium leaching and Alzheimer’s, that’s unproven and a bit of an urban myth.

Is that ME puffy on review too?

Yes, that's the Oreus (due out autumn/winter24). We've got a couple of them on long term review

Interesting, thanks. I'd best do some more reading (not usually that easy to spot sound info from dodgy sources, on the web)

There will be a pro chemist here on UKC that will be able to give a far better view than I can  

I know about the aluminium purely from mom having had Alzheimers and having researched it thoroughly back in the day.

Teflon has several disparate issues that give it its bad rep. Yes, the PTFE itself – (C2F4)n – is very stable and harmless at normal temperatures. But that's not the whole picture.

First is the manufacturing, which used to release lots of PFASs in its waste stream (DuPont and others used to dump it directly into rivers for decades). PFOA and PFOS salts were used as part of the PTFE making process.

After massive multi‑billion lawsuits and public backlash, they changed that to other PFAS formulations free of PFOA and PFOS only. Which doesn't mean that it's now PFAS‑free, only that they changed the formula to lesser known PFASs ("Gen‑X"), which might be less persistent. Or so they say. Sure. Gen‑X compounds were still found in the rivers, go figure...

Second is outgassing, as some smaller emissions of PFASs were sometimes found even at normal cooking temperatures over 180C, perhaps from left‑over emulsifier residues or PTFE degradation during the high temperature coating process degrading into PFASs and trapping them in the coating.

Third is thermal degradation of PTFE, which happens at higher temperatures, mostly above 260C. The more you heat it, the more PTFE degrades into potentially harmful PFASs, and not linearly. Overheating an empty teflon pan over 360C released 2500x more PFASs than at normal use at 230C in one study.

Soooooo - on a Trangia/gas burner is there significant risk to the user, statistically speaking?

With the outgassing at 180C, is this not taken in to consideration during manufacturing and factored in to the process so that it is done as part of the QC prior to shipping to negate this at point of use?

Thank you for the broader explanation, super easy to get to grips with.

Likely not really a significant risk to the user, unless they do dumb stuff with it. Myself, I just wouldn't use any teflon coated cookware to melt snow or stuff like that where local overheating can occur.

The more significant emission amounts seemed to be only at the "overheating" temperatures. I still use some teflon cookware at home myself, as I already own it.

My biggest concern with it is environmental, as any teflon or similar PFCs manufacture still releases some persistent, harmful precursors into the environment and saying that PFCs industry's environmental record is "somewhat spotty" is likely an understatement of the century. 

Anyway, the reviewed Sea to Summit cookware claims to use a ceramic non‑stick coating, which doesn't really sound like using any PFCs during the process – though a clear statement to that end would still be helpful.

Aluminium is a naturally occurring substance and we do have mechanisms for excreting it. (As long as you're not on dialysis, then it's less good).

Also environmental aluminium exposure is way down on what it used to be (at least in the states, reference below). So you should be far less worried about the microscopic amount of aluminium from your hiking pans, that mainly live in your cupboard than the environment at the turn of the century.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29509029

I bought a Sea to Summit collapsible X-bowl for a trip to the Bugaboos on the reasoning was it is light and packs flat. In fact I was only able to use it three times. The problem? It was chewed into pieces by pika when left in our tent porch overnight. Either it still smelled of food or they just enjoyed the mindless destruction. I then had nothing to eat off for the remainder of the trip. Conclusion: do not buy.

Or don't leave something that smells of food somewhere where food boxes are provided specicifally so your kit doesn't get trashed?

I left some toothpaste in my tent in the bugaboos and came back to find a Packrat had chewed into the inner to get it, hardly the tent manufacturers fault is it.

Years ago a mouse ate through the lid of my Jetboil whilst climbing on El Cap.

I attributed blame in order of priority:

1) the mouse - for perpetrating the crime

2) me - for leaving it out

3) jetboil - for not considering the mouseproofedness of their product

Did the mouse top out?

You mean you were cooking it alive?

That mouse had no integrity at all, it even pooed in my Jetboil, so I very much doubt it did, and if it did it wasn’t by fair means.

That said, I was aid climbing at the time, so I’m not sure what that says about my integrity either (although we didn’t place any pegs, so that counts for something - right?!) 😅