Caraway
Markets itself hard on being free of "the big five" (PTFE, PFAS, lead, cadmium, and plastic-lined coatings), and the sol-gel ceramic coating genuinely isn't PTFE. But "non-toxic" is the brand's whole pitch, and the framing does a lot of work: the coating is a proprietary mineral layer they don't fully characterize, and its durability (and what happens as it wears) is the open question their marketing tends to skip.
How clear are their specs?
Loud and clear about what the coating is NOT (no PTFE/PFAS, third-party tested), but vague about what it actually IS — the sol-gel formulation is proprietary and they don't publish a full material breakdown. Good on the scary acronyms, thin on specifics.
Lead testing disclosure
Publishes named third-party lab reports per product (migration/leach testing in food-simulating solutions plus heavy-metal analysis) at a dedicated testing page, claiming no detectable lead or cadmium. Worth knowing: independent XRF testing (Lead Safe Mama) of a Caraway pan found lead directly on the cooking surface and on the handle rivets. Caraway says this is a testing-methodology disagreement (total surface content vs. leachable content) rather than a refutation, but no independent leach test has been published to referee between the two results.
- manufacturer https://www.carawayhome.com/third-party-testing Caraway's own page publishing per-product third-party lab reports
- lab-test https://tamararubin.com/2021/08/caraway-cookware-without-the-chemicals-tested-positive-for-20-metals-including-lead-mercury-cobalt-antimony-when-tested-with-xrf-technology/ independent XRF result that conflicts with Caraway's own leach-testing claim
