What is Microban?
Microban is a company (Microban International) as well as a product brand name (Microban®) for an antibacterial system that may contain triclosan, a general-purpose antibacterial, and other substances applied to solid plastics and fibers. That system dates back to 1969 and was first used in industrial and medical industries, with introduction to consumer products starting in 1994.
THE COMPANY
Scanpan (“Scan” for “Scandanavian” since they are made in Denmark; “pan” meaning cooking pan) is a Danish company founded in 1956.1
Scanpan is perhaps better known for its nonstick Scanpan CTX
But Scanpan also makes a Scanpan CSX
As the New York Times puts it, “Experts now say that no amount of lead in the blood is safe, and that even low levels of exposure can harm cognitive function and have other adverse effects.”1
The effects of lead are irreversible. Lead bioaccumulates–meaning it does not get flushed out with urine or feces. Instead, lead embeds itself in your bones, brain, kidneys, and other organs and causes lots of problems: muscle pain, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, fatigue, headaches, insomnia, anemia, behavior disorders, visual impairment, numbness, abdominal pain, depression, and.. well you get the idea. Even tiny amounts of lead decrease IQ and increase behavioral problems in kids, and adults aren’t immune either.2 For example, an increase in blood lead from 10 to 20 micrograms/dl = a decrease of 2.6 IQ points in school-aged children regardless of whether they were in poor, middle, or upper-class households.3 A decrease of IQ points means worse performance at school/work and lower lifetime earnings, among other things.
Even though scientists have known that there is no “safe” level of lead exposure since the 1920s, the government has been slow to act. For example, federal law (the Safe Water Drinking Act of 1974, as amended throughout the years) defined “lead free” drinking water pipes to mean “up to 8% lead” from 1974 to 2011. After 2011, “lead free” meant “up to 0.25% lead.”4 (On what planet should “lead free” mean “up to 8% lead”? Would you drink “urine free” water that was 8% urine?) For pre-1974 homes, lead limits varied; some local governments were still allowing 100% lead pipes. On a related note, lead paint for residential construction was not banned until 1978, and gasoline-makers were legally adding lead to gas until 1986.5
Flint is famous for failing to keep lead out of its drinking water, but in December 2016, Reuters found nearly 3,000 areas with recently recorded lead poisoning rates at least double those in Flint during the peak of that city’s contamination crisis. And more than 1,100 of these communities had a rate of elevated blood tests at least four times higher.6 More than 5,000 water systems across the country are violating rules meant to keep lead out of drinking water.7 U.S. water infrastructure has been decaying all over the country for decades: in Sebring, Ohio, the city waited five months to warn pregnant women and children to stop drinking their lead-contaminated water, and Washington D.C. waited three years to warn its residents after lead spiked to as much as 20 times the federally-approved limit.8
Worse, lead is only one of many different toxic substances that can make it into drinking water supplies. The same New York Times article referenced above also talks about how tap water testing can be spotty in terms of geography and in time: in Brick Township, New Jersey, almost no homes exceeded the EPA limit for lead in 2011. Three years later, nearly half of the tested 34 homes exceeded the limit. Affected homeowners drank contaminated water for three years thinking they were safe.
And then there’s this:
Cooking surface: 4/5 Very Good (comparable to stainless steel in stickiness)
Conductive layer: 5/5 Excellent (highest thermal conductivity among all metals)
External surface: 3/5 Good (silver is only about a hard as aluminum, so it scratches easily on stovetop grates)
Examples: Soy Turkiye (Soy Türkiye)
Health safety: 5/5 Excellent (ingesting trace amounts of silver is completely safe, and silver is naturally antimicrobial)
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DESCRIPTION AND COMPOSITION
Silver is the most thermally conductive metal in the universe that we know of. It even beats copper by about 10%, depending on metal purity. (In order of highest to lowest thermal conductivity: silver (406 W/m*K), copper (385), gold (314), aluminum (205), typical cookware-grade aluminum alloy (~160), platinum (72), tin (67), cast iron/carbon steel (~50), stainless steel (16), enamel/ceramic/glass (~1), water (0.6), and PTFE such as Teflon (0.25). [Read more…]
Note: If you have an induction stove, see De Buyer Prima Matera instead.
THE COMPANY
Soy Türkiye (pronounced “Soy TUR-KEY-eh“) is a Turkish cookware company based in Istanbul (not Constantinople). Türkiye is the Turkish word for the country of Turkey. Soy is a Turkish word that translates to “heritage” or “essence,” so Soy Türkiye means the “Heritage/Essence of Turkey.” The company makes Turkish coffee pots (cezves) as well as cookware–including .999 solid silver cookware. That’s right, the entire vessel except the handle, made out of 99.9%+ pure solid silver, costing several thousand dollars apiece.
Note: If you have an induction stove, see De Buyer Prima Matera instead.
THE COMPANY
Mauviel (pronounced “moe-vee-ELL”) is an French company that has a ~200 year tradition of making fine cookware and is one of the oldest French cookware manufacturers still around.