Stainless steel

Not a fluorochemical

Base materials. Also written stainless, 18/8, 18/10, 304, 316.

An iron alloy with chromium, uncoated in the ordinary case, so the cooking or drinking surface is the metal itself.

No coating means no coating chemistry to disclose, which is why this group has the shortest list of unknowns in the dataset. It is not a blank cheque. A stainless bottle can still have a painted exterior or a plastic lid, and a stainless pan can be sold with a non-stick interior, in which case the spec sheet will match both terms.

What the makers actually said

Of the 104 graded products whose materials record stainless steel alongside a coating or finish, 89.4% name no coating chemistry anywhere in their published materials. This is a count of what companies published. It is not a statement about what any product contains.

Named a fluoropolymer
0
Named a coating that is not a fluorochemical
11
Named no chemistry at all
93

A further 709 products record stainless steel with no coating or finish at all, so there is nothing for a maker to have disclosed. They are outside the split above.

Free to quote with a link. Of the 104 graded consumer products that record stainless steel together with a coating or finish, 89.4% name a coating chemistry anywhere in their published materials, according to PFAS Authority's October 2026 spec sheet decoder edition.

How those 813 products graded on our rubric

These are model-based estimates, not laboratory tests, scored on one public rubric. Read the spread against the categories underneath it rather than as a verdict on stainless steel in the abstract, because the rubric gives every category a baseline and a term concentrated in one category will carry that category’s spread with it.

Median grade 75 out of 100, across 37 categories.

GradeProductsShare
Excellent47458.3%
Good24630.3%
Poor131.6%
Bad809.8%

Where stainless steel turns up

The 6 categories holding the most of it, out of 37. Each one links to the live ranking for that category, best graded first.

Best graded with stainless steel

One per category, best first, so the list is not five of the same thing.

Worst graded with stainless steel

One per category, worst first. A low grade here is usually something else on the product, not the term.

Decode a whole listing instead

A product usually names several of these at once, and the one that matters is rarely the one in the title. Paste the full materials line into the decoder and it will pick out every term it recognises, the most open-ended first.

Other base materials

Edition 2026-10-08, read from 11,337 graded products carrying a material string, and frozen at that date. A term is matched against the material and construction string recorded for each product, written from its published materials, specification and ingredient list rather than from a laboratory test. Products count under every term they match, so the totals across terms overlap. Found something wrong? Tell us.