PFAS: Are Teflon pans "safe"? SEB targeted by a complaint for "deceptive commercial practice"

The SEB group and its subsidiary Tefal are the target of a complaint by NGOs accusing them of "deceptive commercial practices" for having claimed that their Teflon pans were " safe ," the associations announced Thursday.

The complaint, filed by France Nature Environnement (FNE), Générations Futures, and the Citizen and Secular Consumer Association (ACLC), concerns an advertising campaign dating back to 2024 and a communication on the Tefal brand's website. It was sent to the Paris prosecutor's office on Wednesday morning, the FNE told AFP.

By " ensuring that the non-stick coatings of its pans are recognized as safe because they contain PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene, another name for Teflon, editor's note) and not PFOA ," other banned PFAS ("eternal pollutants"), the group " fails to mention the risk of substances being released into the environment due to the use of PTFE, throughout the product life cycle, as well as the health risks when using the brand's pans ," the associations argue in a press release.

" It is unacceptable to communicate in this way when the health of the population, particularly workers, and the environment is at stake. Tefal must be held accountable and sanctioned ," protests Anne Roques, a lawyer for FNE. To support their complaint, the associations rely on the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a UN agency, which concluded that "there is insufficient data to classify PTFE as a carcinogen, but does not comment on the absence of carcinogenicity or on the fact that PTFE is safe ."

Asked by AFP in April 2024, the IARC declined to comment on SEB's claims about Teflon's safety, " due to the age " of its assessments. The NGOs also cite a November 2023 study in South Korea that " shows that PTFE microparticles cause harmful health effects such as inflammation ."

In April 2024, MPs adopted an environmental bill aimed at restricting the manufacture and sale of products containing PFAS, or "eternal pollutants," but excluding kitchen utensils, following strong advocacy from manufacturers, including Tefal. The final text, promulgated in February 2025, retains this exclusion.

Present in a multitude of everyday objects, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, which number in the thousands, owe their nickname of "eternal pollutants" to their capacity to accumulate and persist in natural environments and the organisms of living beings, and their scientifically proven toxic effects on the environment and health.