Bought a new hair dryer, and it smells pretty chemical-ish. Like the smell of a new car. Surely it can’t be healthy fume stuff when used, especially with the high temperatures of hair drying? PTFE (Teflon) material fumes?
Why do you think your hair dryer has PTFE in it? I imagine there’s going to be some period of outgassing (like with a new car), is the smell diminishing over time?
Space heater coils are coated with a small amount of PTFE; I’ve heard it was to keep them clean during shipping. A woman I used to know owned birds. During a winter furnace problem she bought several space heaters to keep her birds warm. Two parrots died from the fumes.
This is interesting. My initial reaction was “PTFE can’t make you sick – it’s inert!” And for practical purposes, it is. Even if you heat it, it won’t melt until 600K. That would require much higher temperatures than a hair dryer hits.
But PolyTetraFluoroethylene (PYFE, or Teflon) doesn’t come alone – perfluorooctanoate, AKA perfluorooctanoic acid, or, understandably, C8, is used as a surfactant in producing perfluoropolymers. It’s toxic, carcinogenic, and persistent in the environment. It’s been made in industrial quantities since the 1940s, and its use has only been phased out recently.
This is the stuff that’s driven off by heating Teflon-coated pans and has caused deaths of birds and “Teflon flu” in humans. If you had Teflon in a hair dryer in any part that gets hot, it could be there, too.
So it’s not the PTFE that’s affecting you – it’s the C8 that seems to invariably accompany it. I’m sure that will make you feel better.
It’s likely not PTFE at all, but Bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate that you smell. It’s not very toxic, but there are some concerns about it being an endocrine disrupter.