Melissa: 00:09

Hey. I'm Melissa.

Jam: 00:10

And I'm Jam.

Melissa: 00:12

And I'm a chemist.

Jam: 00:13

And I'm not.

Melissa: 00:14

And welcome to Chemistry For Your Life.

Jam: 00:16

The podcast helps you understand the chemistry of your everyday life.

Melissa: 00:19

Two times in one day, but only for us. These are a week apart for you guys.

Jam: 00:24

Yeah. Sorry. Yes. And quite much chemistry in one day, which might be better. You might wanna spread it out depending on your schedule or how much commercial you can handle at once.

Jam: 00:32

It just might be better. Who knows?

Melissa: 00:34

Or if you wanna feel like you get to hang out with us every week. You know?

Jam: 00:36

That's right.

Melissa: 00:37

We're doing these 2 at once, and then Jim and I are not gonna record for, I guess, 2 weeks. Yeah. That's kinda sad when you think about it. Yeah.

Jam: 00:46

Hey. Maybe we shouldn't maybe we shouldn't

Melissa: 00:47

have done this.

Melissa: 00:48

Maybe we shouldn't do this. I'm gonna be out of town for

Melissa: 00:51

a little while with my dad, so that's why we're going all at once. Okay. So this is a follow-up of Erica's question Mhmm. About Teflon pants. So she asked, you know the Teflon Danger back in the eighties?

Melissa: 01:06

I didn't really know about it. Mhmm. When it was discovered that their chemicals were causing cancer and birth defects, that's a real thing. We'll talk about it. But we still have these nonstick pans.

Melissa: 01:16

Is it safe to use when scratched? That's a great question. So we're gonna talk about it. But before we do, I do wanna tell you that,

Melissa: 01:26

I was looking for her question

Melissa: 01:28

Uh-huh. And I typed Teflon into my Imessages on my computer.

Jam: 01:32

Uh-huh.

Melissa: 01:33

And it pulled up a really Old message from her. Apparently, she had asked this, like, way back in the beginning of our podcast. So she had already asked this question. Uh-huh. And then I guess it just reoccurred to her, and she didn't remember it, neither did I.

Melissa: 01:47

And so I was trying to figure out what was going on because I knew that wasn't the thing I looked for. So I Typed in Teflon again and hit enter, but then I just text messaged her Teflon at 1 o'clock in the morning.

Melissa: 01:58

So, Sorry for that 1 AM text message, Erica, but I was really excited about this topic, and I just wanted to get your questions exactly right. Okay?

Jam: 02:07

Also, yeah, sorry. It took us so long to get to it. Although that's probably the nature of a lot of these questions. There's hopefully more questions than we can get to quickly, and then we just have Plenty of chemistry for the future.

Melissa: 02:21

Oh my gosh. There's so many questions. There's I have a a super long list, and I try as soon as someone messages me to put it in my list

Jam: 02:28

Good. Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa: 02:29

I really try to do that, but sometimes I forget, which I think is what happened to Erica's question way back at the 1st place. And I just will try to find something that I'm excited about because I think that is the most interesting thing Mhmm. For that week, and so I just kinda go with wherever the wind takes me.

Jam: 02:48

Yeah.

Melissa: 02:49

Now What I'm about to tell you is gonna come with a grain of salt.

Jam: 02:53

Okay.

Melissa: 02:54

Because this involves lawsuits. It involves The environment involves a lot of things that I think it's sometimes hard to come up with an objective Opinion on.

Jam: 03:06

Right.

Melissa: 03:07

And I used a few journals that I hadn't used before. I tried to confirm that they're peer reviewed, but one was about investigative journalism, so I don't know how to confirm that source. Mhmm. But it seemed Like, the information was accurate based on everything else I read.

Jam: 03:25

Okay.

Melissa: 03:26

So all this is alleged, and I did the best I could with the information I have, and the references are put into our references.

Jam: 03:37

Okay.

Melissa: 03:38

I just don't wanna get sued. Yeah. But, also, I think it is important to remember when you're reading any news source, the person writing it has an agenda. And so some of the Things I read, I was like Mhmm. Well, this person clearly is angry, and I would try to suss through those things.

Jam: 03:54

Yeah. And the fact that anything you read or reference is locked in time. It is Mhmm. Stuck in unless it gets updated, Stuck in a time period where there was certain information available

Melissa: 04:06

Right.

Jam: 04:06

And that contains too.

Melissa: 04:07

So And that was part of the problem. A lot of these came out in 2004. So when a lot of the lawsuits and stuff were, like, just starting Mhmm. And I didn't find out about how a lot of them resolved. It was hard to get up to date information.

Melissa: 04:21

So just remember that any news source you read is gonna have a pretty much. Mhmm. And it's important to try to get multiple sources with different viewpoints. That's what I tried to do. So we talked about Teflon last week for us 10 minutes ago.

Melissa: 04:42

Mhmm. And the polymer itself is safe. If you just have, like, I don't know. A block of Teflon or a sheet of Teflon. Mhmm.

Melissa: 04:49

And you're not doing anything with it, and you just have it there. It's inert. It's nontoxic.

Jam: 04:54

Okay.

Melissa: 04:55

So when it's left alone at room temperature, that's where we're at. But that doesn't really answer Erica's questions about safety and it chipping off and all of that. Mhmm. So I'm just gonna tell you this story. So DuPont was the one who discovered Teflon, But when they made it way back in the eighties, they used a precursor to that chemical that was to Teflon to make it that is very highly, highly toxic.

Melissa: 05:26

And It was kind of a new thing to be using in industry from what I could tell. So DuPont has its own independent safety Regulations that they were doing basically to check on it. Mhmm. And it seems like this was before there was heavy involvement of the United States government in regulating that kind of stuff. Mhmm.

Melissa: 05:48

There was some, from what I could tell, but not heavy. It seems like DuPont may have had evidence that the process of making Teflon was toxic to workers and the environment, And they may have covered it up.

Jam: 06:08

Interesting.

Melissa: 06:10

And the reason it seems like that is because there was a farmer who had, a patch of land, and DuPont DuPont took a nontoxic landfill next to his land. Mhmm. And it according to one article I read, he had a little creek that his cows drank out of. And over time, being next to that At DuPont landfill, the creek started to run black.

Jam: 06:36

Wow. Yikes.

Melissa: 06:38

And then a lot of his cows started to die, And so he he cut open 1 of the cows, and this blew my mind. And I could not independently verify it. Although it said that there was footage of this, so I I wasn't able to find it, but, oh, I wanna see it. I mean, I kind of don't also, though. But he said he cut open his cow, and the inside of the cow had turned neon green.

Jam: 07:07

What?

Melissa: 07:09

Right. And I was like, that seems extreme, but I'm also like, what was the cow drinking?

Jam: 07:15

Yeah.

Melissa: 07:15

So I don't obviously, I did not see that with my own eyes. And when I think neon green, I think, like, glowing glow stick neon green, but it could be that the cow's Organs had just taken on, like, a bright green hue.

Jam: 07:29

Right. Right. Right.

Melissa: 07:31

So

Jam: 07:32

Man, that's crazy.

Melissa: 07:33

I know. And I I didn't look too much into that story specifically, so maybe you guys can go look into it. And if it's wrong, I'll definitely post a correction. But, Again, it was hard to find objective sources on this. Mhmm.

Melissa: 07:46

But whether or not that specific antidote was true or not, That farmer sued DuPont. And as part of that, they had to turn over all these papers. And in those papers, There seemed to be documentation that the process of forming Teflon, not the Teflon itself, but the process they were using to make Teflon Mhmm. Was toxic.

Jam: 08:11

Got

Melissa: 08:11

it. And so that's sort of, I think the beginning of the story of kind of where we are now Mhmm. Is they switched the way they made it. But one paper I read seemed to kind of question, do we know for a fact that the new new chemicals that they're using don't have some kind of carcinogen effect. I don't think we do.

Melissa: 08:37

Mhmm. So I don't know for a fact what the byproducts or the precursors in making Teflon now is. And it's really hard because DuPont, as a company, is trying not to let all its secrets out. You know? Right.

Melissa: 08:52

And I say I wanna say this too. This is a dark side Mhmm. Of the chemical industry, but also DuPont has made and produces a lot of things that help our lives a lot. Mhmm. So this isn't pretty, but And I don't think they handled it well, but you can't also just paint a broad brush, like, say, I hate DuPont.

Melissa: 09:11

Everything they've done is terrible. Mhmm. Mhmm. So just wanna also kinda put that out there is some of the inventions that have come out with from DuPont, like the way they Make refrigerants and stuff like that has been really, really helpful. Yeah.

Melissa: 09:26

But this is one piece of the history that's not so pretty. So we've got a different way of making Teflon now. It doesn't use that same really questionable chemical. But at the time, they did have birth defects, and it seems like they very quietly removed women from the, Teflon making Section 1, several pregnant women had I think it was 2 or 3 out of 7 pregnant women had children with birth defects, and so they didn't report it. It seems like it just kinda shuttled women away from that area, which, again, if you're making moves within your company, You probably have an idea that something's wrong, but all of this is alleged.

Melissa: 10:09

Yeah. Okay.

Jam: 10:10

Gosh. That's crazy.

Melissa: 10:12

I know. It is crazy. Right? So that's a lot of what happened in the eighties, why people, I think, have this idea that it's bad, but they don't have all the information Mhmm. About what's going on with that.

Melissa: 10:26

But so they think, oh, there's all this toxic stuff when they made Teflon, so Teflon's toxic. Teflon itself is not toxic. Mhmm. But just because a molecule is inert and not toxic, it can still build up in our bodies sometimes and keep the function of it working well. So one thing I think of is, like, silica is sand, and it's fine.

Melissa: 10:56

Mhmm. But if you grind it down really, really, really small to silica powder gel Mhmm. Breathing In can coat your lungs and be really dangerous. So while we know that Teflon is not toxic Self, it's inner. It's fine.

Melissa: 11:15

Mhmm. One paper I read did pose the question, do we really know how how it processes through our bodies or if it's building up, if we're chipping it off and it's coming into our bodies and we're consuming it.

Jam: 11:28

Got it. Like, Do we we don't normally have some way that carbon and fluorine are are entering our, bodies And maybe that state is possible that maybe Right. Getting chips of it is, like, something that our bodies aren't aren't used to or something like that.

Melissa: 11:44

Right. So, theoretically, it's not gonna cause any problems, but we just don't know how our bodies process that or the presence of that. And because it's So nonstick and nonpolar, it doesn't interact with water very well. So we don't know how it's even moving through our very watery bodies.

Jam: 12:00

Right. Right.

Melissa: 12:02

So that was the question about, is it safe to use when scratched? Theoretically, yes. But I don't think we can quite know everything about it. Mhmm. Is and that's kind of what this 1 article this one was in a peer reviewed journal, but this 1 scientist kind of seemed to feel like I mean, it seems inert, but we just wanna be careful.

Jam: 12:23

Right.

Melissa: 12:25

Okay. But there's another question even that Erica didn't ask, And that's about heating it. So we talked about the manufacturing. We talked about eating it when it's chipped off in our food. If we're consuming it, how does that affect us?

Melissa: 12:39

Mhmm. Both of those the manufacturing process seems to be fixed, but we don't know for a fact. Mhmm. Eating it seems to be fine, but, again, we don't know for a fact. But the big thing that that I did find that we do know for a fact is that Heating an empty Teflon pan or just heating up Teflon is dangerous.

Jam: 13:00

Oh, wow.

Melissa: 13:01

So I believe these numbers are Celsius. I didn't write it down, and that makes me think it's Celsius. Mhmm. Because I think in terms of Celsius usually. Yeah.

Melissa: 13:10

But heating Teflon to 260 degrees begins to break it down. And if you heat it further to 400 degrees, it's much more dangerous. And empty pans that are just heated, so if you just leave it on and walk away without thinking or whatever, can be dangerous. And there's actually a really interesting study that coated a light bulb with Teflon and just turned it on in a chicken house and basically figured out how many of the chickens died, and it was, one study was kinda low. I mean, low.

Melissa: 13:45

It was still 11% or something like that. And And then another study was, like, 90% of the chickens died. So definitely not good for birds. And I Looked a little bit, but I couldn't find any source basically other than that one. But it seems like a lot of pet stores and stuff Recommend that if you have pet birds, you just don't use Teflon at all.

Jam: 14:06

Wow.

Melissa: 14:08

Right.

Jam: 14:09

Jeez. And, like, how many of us put A pan to heat up a little bit at a time. Mhmm.

Melissa: 14:14

And what

Jam: 14:14

if it And

Melissa: 14:14

if you just Mhmm. Gets up

Jam: 14:16

to that temperature or whatever? And it just, I'm here. Yeah. Yikes.

Melissa: 14:20

Yeah. So I'll tell you what. I'm a big fan of nonstick fans, but I am rethinking it After researching this episode. I mean, it seems like it's not terrible Mhmm. If you use it exactly the way it's intended.

Melissa: 14:35

And you throw it out as soon as it gets stripped, and you never leave it to heat without having food on it already. Mhmm. But the history of the way it's produced and the way that people were mistreated Makes me shy away from it even more.

Jam: 14:52

Right. Right. Right. It's a it's a double whammy there. It's like your own health and well-being, It's about the same time being concerned about how it was handled in the past and feeling like, should I be supporting this?

Jam: 15:03

Like, it just kinda makes you quite makes you question it at least a little bit.

Melissa: 15:06

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's exactly how I feel. I'm like Yeah.

Melissa: 15:11

I just don't know. So I have a Teflon pen right now. Mhmm. It's scratched up. I think I'm gonna stop using it.

Melissa: 15:18

It's my roommate, so I can't just throw it away, but I think I'm gonna stop using it.

Jam: 15:22

I mean, yes, you could if you Bought them a new one. It was like, hey. I made a decision for you, for your health and mine, and, surprise. Here's a new one. I don't know.

Melissa: 15:30

They bought it because initially,

Melissa: 15:32

I was complaining about how hard our pans were to clean, but so it's my fault if we're all being exposed to toxic chemicals. But I did get my parents a ceramic nonstick pan, and it seems like that's maybe a little bit of a safer option. So I might move to ceramic fill here on my own.

Jam: 15:51

I just heard about some company that is a nonstick, that's not Teflon, and I'd be really interested to see what it is Like

Melissa: 15:58

Yeah. But even with that, it's just a new technology. And just like we talked about with the sugars and stuff, we just have to be really careful about new technologies.

Jam: 16:15

Least worth looking at? I don't know. It just seems like completely like eliminating something from Your life, just because you're not sure, doesn't seem at some sort of extreme, but also is like, well, I don't know. It's good to be careful. But

Melissa: 16:29

Right. Yeah. It just reminds me of the conversation we had about diet Coke and radium girls and all that stuff. You know?

Jam: 16:34

Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa: 16:36

Oh, I did wanna answer 1 more though of Erica's questions. Okay. She said, I also just read that we aren't supposed to use cooking nonstick spray in nonstick pans. Is this true and why? The only thing I found about that

Jam: 16:49

Mhmm.

Melissa: 16:50

Was not a scientific thing. It was just basically googling to try and find an answer, and it just said that cooking oil on nonstick pans can burn the oil because of the heat Heats up so fast, and it basically just, like, ruins your van. But I don't think it's about safety.

Jam: 17:07

Okay.

Melissa: 17:08

But I can't confirm that for a fact. That's just all I found from my Brief looking. None of the articles that I looked at anywhere said anything about what happens when you heat oil on Teflon. Nothing. So So that's, that's it.

Jam: 17:22

Wow.

Melissa: 17:23

That's what I learned about the history of Teflon and how it can interact with our bodies. You can look into what it breaks down, the, fumes that it breaks down into when you heat it up the empty pan, but I don't think it would mean much to anyone. It's just not not good fumes that are let out into the air for us to breathe into. So I guess if that accidentally happens to you, open your windows up. That did happen in our house, like, 2 months ago.

Melissa: 17:50

Uh-huh. And we didn't do anything. Melissa. Because I didn't know. I didn't know.

Melissa: 17:57

1 of my roommates turned it on and walked away, and then I came in, and I was like, I don't think you use that. You should use that right now because I think I heard something about how it's can heat up, but I haven't really studied that. And she goes, okay. And then we just used a different pan, but it was about the fumes in the air. So we were just standing in there breathing it.

Melissa: 18:17

Yeah. Yeah.

Jam: 18:18

You guys had no chickens in there with you, did you?

Melissa: 18:21

No chickens. We have no pet birds, but we do have pet puppies. Yeah. I mean, they're not mine, but I don't want them to be hurt Right. Or us humans also to be heard.

Jam: 18:29

True that. So this isn't a traditional explanation kind of, like

Melissa: 18:34

Yeah. It's explained by like the helium episodes. I kinda set you up to where you have nothing to say except say it back to me. Yeah. I could just kind of hit

Jam: 18:43

the highs or the takeaways from me or something like that that

Melissa: 18:45

I think that's a good idea. Okay. Or the things that you found, like, wow. This is really interesting or whatever.

Jam: 18:50

Yeah. And I I'm I'm like I try not to go into these situations. With our podcast, that's definitely the case. But, like, even things like, should we not use this, or should we not drink this, or eat this? I try to, like, Go into those kind of situations with an open mind just to learn whatever I possibly can and not have an assumption about, like, Oh, yeah.

Jam: 19:10

Corporation is trying to kill us. Or, like, oh

Melissa: 19:13

Right.

Jam: 19:13

You know, get over it. Like, we've we've we're fine. There's just, like, 2 extremes where they both think nothing can hurt us, and other people think that everybody's out to get us. Right. And so I try to be in the middle, but it seems like there's a a significant enough column of some concerns.

Jam: 19:28

And so Right. I'll just list the ones that seem to, like, stand out to me, which is pretty much all of them, I guess. But one, the byproduct of making the Teflon At least seem

Melissa: 19:37

Oh, it was a precursor, I think.

Jam: 19:39

Precursor.

Melissa: 19:39

The thing that they used to make it. Yeah. But it might also be byproducts that they're putting in the landfill. Hard to say.

Jam: 19:44

Yeah. So some Part of that process at the beginning back in the eighties was not good for the environment and for, like, some animals nearby and stuff, it seems. So That's a concern because it's like k. Maybe the substance itself isn't is is inert. But If to make it, it caused a lot of problems, then should we be using it is 1 question.

Melissa: 20:08

Right. That's also the same thing for PVC pipe. I think there are some questionable things in the environment that you don't wanna use that, but I Don't remember off the top of my head, so that'll be another episode.

Jam: 20:22

Okay. And the next thing is that Little pieces of it chipping off into our food over time, doesn't seem like there's evidence that it's certainly bad for us, but it's a big question mark. We just don't know. Mhmm. It's not like we've intentionally, you know, fed little piece of that to something, see what happens.

Jam: 20:43

Right. And our bodies Could be super not used to little pieces of the carbon and fluoride molecules or whatever it is. It could have some unexpected consequence. So it's not it's not good to assume that everything's fine there.

Melissa: 20:59

Right. But we can't also assume that it's something's wrong because Just sitting there on the table, it's not toxic to us in any way.

Jam: 21:07

Yeah. Then the the biggest concern for sure is the heating up of The Teflon and the fumes. I feel like the the thing I'm almost certain I've done multiple times is let it get warm without anything in there. And maybe I didn't let it get to that Temperature, that's a problem, but I'm sure I have. And so that's a big concern in my mind thinking, like, fumes that I've probably been around or have subjected to other people to to be around and just have not thought about there being an aromatic, or whatever you wanna call it, element to that.

Jam: 21:44

And so that seems like a big concern and a big thing to be careful about. So in general, I definitely am

Melissa: 21:50

more

Jam: 21:52

I mean, I wasn't really the only thing I had ever seen that made me kinda question whether Teflon was good or bad or whatever. It's just that I saw specifically advertised some pans that were nonstick that didn't use Teflon, they were like, no Teflon.

Melissa: 22:07

Yeah. And so

Jam: 22:07

I was like, maybe there's something bad about it, but I didn't explore it all. This is the first I've ever heard of any of this kinda thing.

Melissa: 22:15

I've heard some of it because my mom was very careful, and she only ever used stainless steel pants, but they were so hard to clean. Mhmm. I mean, like, was just annoyed every single time I scrambled eggs or whatever.

Jam: 22:27

Yeah.

Melissa: 22:27

And for a while, when she first got sick, we were there making her food all the time. Mhmm. And making my dad food too. You know? That neither of them can cook very well, and that he was working a lot.

Melissa: 22:37

And she was really tired, and so we're just cooking there a lot. And I was like, I cannot use these pants any longer, but my mom said you absolutely cannot get a Teflon pant.

Melissa: 22:49

So I went with the ceramic one, which seemed to be according to all the things I

Melissa: 22:53

quickly googled, the safest option. Mhmm. So I think I'll probably switch to that for my own life. And I think stainless steel pans are great for, like, things that like boiling pasta or rice or whatever. That's You know, we use a stainless steel pot for that at home, but here in Denton.

Melissa: 23:12

But I definitely am not gonna be Buying any new Teflon, I think, as a result of my research from this episode. Yeah. Yeah. Well, now that we've just learned about how we may be bring bringing toxic fumes into our homes, do you wanna talk about something happy that happened to you this week?

Jam: 23:30

Absolutely. And the thing I'm gonna share about is baking. Nice. Which I I thought ahead of time about what I wanted to share. It would've been funny if I had picked something, like, Very on topic like cooking with

Melissa: 23:42

with Cooking with Teflon. It's

Jam: 23:44

like, well, I used my Teflon pants this week, blah blah blah. And boy, did I leave them on the with no food in them for about 15 minutes. Mhmm. So I I got into a serious, like, banana bread phase in January.

Melissa: 23:57

Oh my gosh. You really did. And I I walked into your house. Sorry. I'm totally cutting edge.

Jam: 24:01

Go ahead. Go ahead.

Melissa: 24:02

I walked into your house for a church small group with the Other people who live in your house, and you guys were gone.

Jam: 24:09

Mhmm.

Melissa: 24:10

I saw a loaf of bread, and I immediately assumed it was your banana bread and tried to eat it. And instead, it was bread for communion, and it was still good, but I was really excited when I thought there was banana bread there.

Jam: 24:24

Yeah. That's a that's a definitely, like, a, bait and switch there. Takes back something was. Yeah. Like banana bread, and I get that.

Jam: 24:31

So I did that Sierra's banana bread phrase in January, inspired by my sister-in-law, Mindy. She kinda, like, got me hooked on that, and she did she makes really good banana bread. And so we Em and I just got back into doing that this past week. We made I kind of felt you

Melissa: 24:47

spread's the biggest thing that's happening in this pandemic right now.

Jam: 24:51

It is. And I feel like I was In a phase of that before we were ever in this situation. And, I mean, people have made bread forever, so it's not Like a new thing, but people aren't trying to do things at home and keep themselves busy, and that's a great thing. But

Melissa: 25:07

Yeah. And it kind of doesn't take a lot of time, but you just have to be there. You have to be able to let it set for this mat or whatever. So it's a convenient one to do when you're working from home or something like that.

Jam: 25:16

Totally. Totally. So Emma and I got back into doing that, and she Found this much healthier recipe. And so now we have kind of dealt this thing where we'll do 2 loaves at a time. One's kinda more desserty, and the other one's much healthier.

Jam: 25:31

Because, like, you could have a slice of banana bread for breakfast or something like that or as part of your breakfast. And if it's, like, a pretty healthy one that's not too too dirty, you won't feel, like, Guilty about having a sweet bread kind of thing for breakfast. So we did that this week. Really good, very tasty, a lot of fun to do together, and that's my thing.

Melissa: 25:52

That's great. Yeah. I love bread. A a good pastry breakfast, like a nice bread or pastry with a good cup of coffee. When I was in Europe last Spring break, I did that every single morning, and it was always incredible.

Melissa: 26:08

Mhmm. Yeah.

Jam: 26:08

So you

Melissa: 26:09

really love that. Yeah. But my body doesn't do well with, like, wheat and sugar and stuff, so I can't do that consistently. But Mhmm. When I got those cookies delivered to my house, I for sure had 2 chocolate chip cookies with my coffee for breakfast 1 morning, And it was amazing.

Melissa: 26:30

I think my happy thing for this week is going to be I'm trying to keep my mouth on the mic while I look over at My plants.

Jam: 26:38

Uh-huh.

Melissa: 26:39

So I was gifted a jade plant and 2 very rare succulents. Mhmm. And I didn't know how great they were, and I put minimal effort into keeping them alive. And they stayed alive. Mhmm.

Melissa: 26:56

And they thrived, and I became very attached to them. And then one of them had I repotted it and didn't know how to properly drain it. Mhmm. And it Got root rot, and so I freaked out and perform perform plant surgery, and it survived. And that was a year or 2 ago, and it's Still thriving.

Melissa: 27:15

And then another one was doing really well, but it didn't have a lot of airflow, so it got a dry mold to it. Mhmm. So I realized that, and I tried to save it. And they weren't doing really well, but I didn't have much time in the last several months to do anything about it. But I kind of realized that I didn't use the right soil to repot them, so I went ahead and repotted them yesterday.

Melissa: 27:37

I spent, like, 5 hours not really. Let me see. I think it was, like, 2. It felt like 5, but I think I started later than I thought I did. I spent, like, 2 hours just repotting Every single plant I had and putting it in the right environment.

Melissa: 27:50

Mhmm. And now they're on my bedroom window sill looking really cute, and I'm very excited about it. So that's my happy thing.

Jam: 27:59

Nice.

Melissa: 28:00

Yay. Hobbies. Baking and plants.

Jam: 28:02

Yeah. Absolutely. They definitely keep us sane. Hobbies keep us sane in this crazy time, and it just can can make very some fun and some joy in the middle of a weird season.

Melissa: 28:13

Oh my gosh. You know what I think would be really fun?

Jam: 28:16

What's that?

Melissa: 28:17

Would be if we had our listeners show us what they're doing during their Stay at home time. What are their hobbies? I would love to see pictures of you guys. So if you wanna tag us in your Instagram stories or Send us pictures on Twitter or whatever and tell us me and Jam shared our hobbies. He talked about his bread baking.

Melissa: 28:37

I talked about my plant making. I don't know. I just wanted to rhyme that. So send us pictures of what you're doing. Are you riding your bike?

Melissa: 28:44

Are you are you also baking bread? Are You cleaning your room, organizing everything, watching Marie Kondo. Just tell us what you're up to.

Jam: 28:53

Yeah. Absolutely. And

Melissa: 28:54

we'll post it.

Jam: 28:54

That'd be awesome to see what you're doing and also maybe even get some ideas from y'all

Melissa: 28:58

about things that we could

Jam: 28:59

be doing too. So I'd love to see that.

Melissa: 29:02

Me too. That'd be so fun. Okay. Well, thanks, Jam, for learning about the history of Teflon and its safety to our use.

Jam: 29:10

Anytime. I mean, I guess, I don't need to learn about that exact thing again. It's it's gonna stick with me. So

Melissa: 29:17

Yeah. It really stuck with me too. And it's just interesting to see that other side of chemistry, you know, where Every once in a while, the dark side of chemistry kind of rears its head Yeah. Where chemistry makes our life useful, does all these great things for us not makes our life useful. Makes things that are useful for our lives Mhmm.

Melissa: 29:35

Does great things for us, but it can also just Be a little unknown when you start manipulating atoms and elements, and so we just need to be really careful.

Jam: 29:46

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Melissa: 29:48

Well, thanks to all of you guys as well for coming to listen, and I hope you are staying healthy and safe and enjoying your fun hobbies during our weird pandemic lockdown.

Jam: 30:00

Yeah. Thanks, guys. And thanks so much for listening, and please, please stay safe. Melissa and I have a lot of ideas for topics of chemistry in everyday life, but wanna hear from you. If you have questions or ideas, you can reach out to us on Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook at chem for your life.

Jam: 30:14

That's Kim, f o r, your life, shared thoughts and ideas. If you enjoy this podcast, you can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. If you really like it, you can write a review on Apple Podcasts. That helps us to be able to share chemistry with even more people. If you'd like to help us keep our show going and contribute to cover the cost of making it, Go to kodashfi.com/chem for your life, and donate the cost of a cup of coffee.

Melissa: 30:39

This episode of Chemistry For Your Life was created by Melissa Colini and Jam Robinson. References for this episode can be found in our show notes or on our website. Jam Robinson is our producer, and we'd like to give a special thanks to v Garza and s Flint who reviewed this episode.