Exposure to toxins found in non-stick cookware could lead to diabetes

Researchers have claimed that to have found links between high levels of perfluorinated compounds in the blood and diabetes.

Perfluorinated compounds are used in a wide variety of industrial and consumer products, including fire fighting foam, non-stick cookware, and grease and water-repellent materials such as food contact material, ski wax and GoreTex, for example.

In a group of more than a thousand 70-year-old men and women from Uppsala, levels of seven different perfluorinated compounds were measured in the blood and related to whether the individuals had diabetes (114 persons) or not. These seven perfluorinated compounds was detectable in virtually all individuals in the study.

Monica Lind , associate professor at the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Uppsala University, said that they saw that high levels, especially of one of the perfluorinated compounds, perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA), were linked to diabetes.

She added that Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) was also associated with diabetes in this group, and that they also saw that PFOA was linked to disrupted secretion of insulin from the pancreas.he study is part of the so-called PIVUS study at Uppsala University.