HEALTH RISK OR OTHERWISE, NONSTICK IT TO ME.

Byline: Stephanie Becker Local View

THE latest culinary contretemps has left me in a sticky situation. To use my Teflon or not to use my Teflon? That is the question. Whether it is nobler to fry my egg in my nonstick pan and face an unknown risk of cancer or take up butter and oil and suffer the clogging of arteries and needless hours of dishpan hands.

Now, after years of simmering questions, Teflon's safety has come to a boiling point. Last week, an Environmental Protection Agency panel named perfluorooctanoate - a main ingredient used to make the substance nonstick - as a chemical non-grata.

The way I understand it is that the coated cookware becomes a recipe for danger when it's left to heat up to more than 600 degrees Fahrenheit. That's the temperature of your standard jet engine and the boiling point of mercury. (Stew on that, Michael Moore.)

Under normal circumstances, you'd have to be pretty inattentive to let that happen. But I grew up at the confluence of woman's lib and TV dinners. Girls like me scoff at cooking and cleaning. We are all about careers and convenience. I have no burning desire for culinary excellence. I blanch at the simplest of instructions. Crack egg, cook. How long? What about the shell? Is something burning?

Teflon was an accidental discovery made back in 1938. But it was more than a generation before a Frenchman figured out how to make a nonstick surface actually stick to a pan and move Teflon from a military-industrial product to the miracle of my mother's kitchen. First they sent us the Statute of Liberty, then they gave us freedom from skillet-scrubbing. Voila!

Perhaps as important as Teflon the kitchen tool is Teflon's roasting ability in the political arena. It's an important symbol. Opponents lambasted Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton when their political troubles wouldn't stick. Only the most skillful of politicians seem to bear that Teflon coat of arms. For instance, embattled former Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown is no Teflon man. Try as he might, Brownie's getting burned. My personal favorite is the ``Teflon Don,'' John Gotti. He frustrated the feds because criminal charges almost never stuck. He could have earned the name for the amazing polymer sweat suits he wore, which made him both a fashion victim and perpetrator. Curiously, he died of cancer.

That brings us to why the EPA is panning Teflon. The EPA settled with Teflon's manufacturer for $16.5 million over the company's failure to report possible cancer risks. Seems the chemical's been showing up in people's bloodstreams and other bodies of water.

Although given its nonstick properties, maybe it's a good thing PFOA is coursing through the veins of this pizza-packing, lard-loving beer-batter babe. Especially after the latest research shows that a low-fat diet in women over the age of 60 doesn't do much about the risk of heart attacks. But detractors say the study wasn't very well done. Seems a lot of the women on the low-fat diet didn't really stick to it. And maybe by the time you're 60 you've earned the right to chow down on greasy groceries like cookies and ice cream and fried eggs - in a Teflon skillet with lots of sizzling butter.

Mmmmm, I think I've got a little taste for danger.