Products from some lines owned by both Groupe SEB and Meyer—including some Rachael Ray products—are advertised as “PFAS-free” or “toxin-free.” When asked about products sold by both companies that contain claims about PFAS, Zarlenga sent over an example of a Caraway ad from the lawsuit featuring language that he claims goes against the NAD ruling and imagery labeling a generic nonstick pan as “Toxic Cookware.”

“This ad and others like it are a far cry from simply stating that a product is toxin-free,” Zarlenga said. “Under the circumstances, it should be no surprise that producers of traditional nonstick cookware are taking steps to correct misinformation about their products in the courts and in a small number of state legislatures.”

Jordan Nathan, the founder of Caraway, alleges this and some of the ads in the complaint using outdated messaging were displayed as a result of tech glitches and are no longer part of the company’s materials.

“A number of the examples within the complaint are actually in compliance with the NAD,” Nathan claims. “The tricky thing is that we’re allowed to say we’re nontoxic, because we don’t have PFAS. A lot of the ads and content you’ll see today speak toward Caraway itself versus running a comparison.”

“Advertising law will typically allow opinions, what we call puffery, saying ‘my product is the best, my product is better, it's the favorite,’” says Michael Goodyear, an associate professor at New York Law School. However, he says, the law also aims to guard consumers against “statements being made as statements of fact,” especially if any of them are wrong or misleading.

The case is set to proceed to trial. If it does, Goodyear says, the debate over the science could take center stage before a jury.

“Where the rubber really seems to make the road in this case is, has PTFE ever caused any health issues when it’s used as coating for cookware?” he says. “It seems like there's a dispute about that.”

PFAS are a class of thousands of different chemicals that have been used since the 1940s. Their components break down very slowly over time, which they can build up in the environment and the human body. Some of the most commonly used forever chemicals have been linked to a wide variety of health impacts, from cancers to reproductive issues to reduced immune response. Research has shown that around a third of Americans are exposed to forever chemicals in their drinking water, while nearly all US residents have some form of PFAS chemicals in their blood.

After the health implications of some of these chemicals became public in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the industry phased out production of two of the most harmful types of PFAS, including the main chemicals used to make nonstick pans. Nonstick cookware is now largely made with PTFE, a different type of PFAS chemical. Group SEB and Meyer use it, and the lawsuit claims that it “is a fundamentally safe chemical.”

Much of Caraway’s marketing before the NAD decision focused on how Nathan founded the company after getting sick with “Teflon flu,” a commonly used term for a health condition that is the result of breathing in fumes from heated forever chemicals. The Poison Control center reported more than 250 cases of suspected Teflon flu in consumers in 2023.

The lawsuit argues that “under normal conditions,” cookware made with PTFE has “never been proven to pose any health risks or have any measurable risk of contaminating consumers’ food, homes, or bodies.” (PTFE pans have to reach very high temperatures in order to release toxins, a situation that the lawsuit describes as outside of how people normally cook their food.) The FDA has allowed some PFAS to be used for nonstick coating, but, as the NAD decision notes, the agency’s “rationale focuses only on the migration of PFAS to food and does not address the potential toxicity when the fumes are overheated.”

As Groupe SEB and Meyer acknowledge in their complaint, different types of PFAS are still used to manufacture PTFE. This, says Courtney Carignan, an exposure scientist and environmental epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, can increase possible exposure for workers and the chance of the chemicals entering the air and water. (Teflon flu, Carignan says, was documented early on in workers exposed to fumes in factories.) However, Carignan says that for humans, there’s “surprisingly few studies on cookware PFAS emissions, migration to food, and consumer exposure.”