PFAS on razor blades?
One of the topics I am currently investing a bit more research in, given my recent move to cut my hair, is razors, shaving, skull shaving, shaving blades, electric shavers, and everything around that. I even created a subpage listing the razors I am using.
One thing I wonder about, especially since I am not finding much information about it, is why nobody is talking about PFAS in the form of PTFE (also known as Teflon) on blades. It seems like almost all razor blades have some PTFE coating on them to make them glide more smoothly over the skin.
Shaving with a safety razor is often sold as a more sustainable alternative to cartridge razors, but apparently they only focus on the plastics, although PTFE is a plastic as well (when counting the micrograms compared to the grams of the macro plastics).
I bought a pack of the Treet Carbon Steel and will try them as soon as I need a new blade in one of my safety razors. The Treet “Black Beauty” was the only easily available blade I was able to find without any coating. I read that they can rust very fast because they are made of carbon steel and not stainless steel, so I probably have to dry them with some isopropanol after using them.
But please explain to me, why aren’t “forever chemicals” on razor blades a more widely discussed topic? Even if PTFE itself isn’t that critical, from what I read in various discussions, it involves a lot of other harmful chemicals in production. And once those chemicals are out there in the environment, they are never going to disappear again.
Tags: Shaving, Sustainability
