Is Our Place Always Pan Actually Non-Toxic?

Is Our Place non toxic, or is the Always Pan another clean-marketed story with thin documentation behind it? So Fair Marrow ran the Always Pan 2.0 against our four-pillar product-review framework: Ingredients, Manufacturing, Off-gassing and Stability, Customer Service. The pan is genuinely PFAS-free. The brand says so. Consumer Reports confirmed it. But “PFAS-free” answers about ten percent of the question. Here is what the rest of the audit found, where the Thermakind coating is genuinely cleaner than Teflon, and the three places Our Place still will not tell you what is in the pan.

The Brand’s Claim

Our Place’s care guide is direct. The brand says its proprietary nonstick coating, Thermakind, is “made without PFAS, PTFE, microplastics, and other Forever Chemicals,” and is “mainly composed of three natural ingredients: silica, water, and alcohol” per the Our Place ceramic nonstick care guide.

The marketing pitch extends further. The brand positions Thermakind as “safe for you, your family, your home, and the planet.” The Always Pan 2.0 also added a recycled-aluminum core and a stainless steel handle that survives oven temperatures up to 450 degrees Fahrenheit, per the Food and Wine review of the Always Pan 2.0.

So the public claim is: PFAS-free, PTFE-free, lead-free, cadmium-free, microplastic-free, with three primary ingredients in the coating. The question is whether the documentation backs the claim.

The Materials Audit

The pan body is recycled aluminum. The handle is stainless steel. Both materials are well-documented as food-safe at standard cooking temperatures. The audit question lives in the coating.

Thermakind is a sol-gel ceramic-style coating. The Our Place coating-safety page lists silica, water, and alcohol as the main ingredients. But ceramic sol-gel chemistry is more involved than three components. According to ingredient-safety researcher Tatiana Rodriguez at I Read Labels For You’s Our Place Always Pan investigation, sol-gel coatings of this style can potentially include titanium dioxide nanoparticles, poly-zirconium oxides, poly-aluminum oxides, chromium oxides, silicon carbides, siloxanes, and trace fluorine compounds. Our Place does not confirm or deny which of these additional materials are in Thermakind.

So the gap between “silica, water, and alcohol” and the full sol-gel chemistry is the documentation question. Sol-gel coatings work because nano-sized raw materials cure into a hardened surface. Our Place confirms this. The brand told the I Read Labels For You investigator that “there are nano-sized raw materials in the liquid state of all sol-gel ceramic coatings” but added that “once they are cured and hardened, these particles cannot break free.”

The peer-reviewed research is less reassuring. A 2017 study in Food Control (Ntim et al., 2018) tested ceramic cookware under acidic cooking conditions (3% acetic acid, the standard simulant for tomato-based dishes) and found ionic titanium, silicon, and aluminum migration that increased with simulated consumer use.

Our Place’s public testing record is the third gap. The brand provided a test report to one investigator in 2020 confirming non-detectable lithium, lead, cobalt, cadmium, and mercury. The report did not include results for PFAS, PTFE, PFOA, or microplastics. The brand has not released test reports since.

The SDS and Manufacturing Reality

There is no publicly available SDS for the Thermakind coating. Fair Marrow searched the SDS Discovery and CDC SDS databases. Nothing surfaced. The brand’s customer service confirmed in March 2026, per the I Read Labels For You investigation, that Our Place “does not release test results” because the coating is “proprietary information.”

Compare this to Caraway, which sells essentially the same product format. Caraway publishes third-party test reports for PTFE, other PFAS, lead, cadmium, and other heavy metals in the surface coating itself, not just leach testing into food. LeafScore’s side-by-side comparison notes this is the major transparency gap between the two brands.

Manufacturing happens in China. Our Place has not publicly named the factory or any certifications it operates under. LeafScore notes both brands likely operate in BSCI or SMETA certified factories but neither brand confirms this with documentation.

The PFAS-free claim does have one solid backstop. Consumer Reports tested the Always Pan against 96 known PFAS compounds in 2022 and detected none of them. That is the cleanest single piece of third-party evidence backing the Our Place claim. The caveat: there are thousands of PFAS compounds, and the 96-compound panel is a sample, not a complete screen.

Off-gassing and Stability

Sol-gel ceramic coatings break down faster than PTFE. The peer-reviewed cookware reviews are consistent on this point. Ceramic coatings typically lose nonstick performance after six months to a year of regular use, while PTFE coatings hold for two to five years under similar conditions.

Six-month real-world reviews mirror this pattern. A six-month Reddit user review of Our Place pans noted everything began sticking by month six, including eggs, pork belly, and dumplings. The customer service response was to scrub with baking soda and vinegar. The user concluded the pans were “comparable to a twenty-five dollar nonstick pan from Amazon” in longevity.

The Always Pan 2.0’s Thermakind formulation is rated to last 50% longer than the original. So if the original Thermakind held nonstick for six months, the 2.0 might hold for nine. That is the brand’s own claim, and Fair Marrow has not seen independent long-term durability data on the 2.0 formula yet.

The stability question matters because as a sol-gel coating wears, the aluminum substrate underneath can become exposed. Aluminum migration into food is a documented exposure route, particularly with acidic cooking. So a worn Thermakind coating is not as inert as a worn Teflon coating, where the substrate is usually anodized aluminum or stainless steel.

Customer Service

Our Place’s customer service responsiveness is the strongest pillar. The brand offers a one-year warranty on coating performance, replies to coating-failure complaints, and replaces or discounts replacements when the coating degrades within the warranty window.

The transparency response is weaker. Investigator-level requests for test reports get the “proprietary information” reply. This is the brand’s biggest gap against Caraway, which provides downloadable third-party test reports on request.

The Fair Marrow Standard Rating

Our Place Always Pan 2.0 lands at Tier 2 on the Fair Marrow Standard.

The Tier 2 placement comes from three concrete facts. The pan is confirmed PFAS-free by Consumer Reports against a 96-compound panel. The coating is a sol-gel ceramic, structurally cleaner than PTFE. The brand has been transparent about its main ingredients.

It does not qualify for Tier 1 because Tier 1 requires inert materials like glass, bare stainless, or true ceramic. Sol-gel ceramic is a coating, not a true ceramic. The coating contains nanoparticles by design. The brand will not publish the full ingredient list or current test reports. Without that disclosure, the pan cannot move to Tier 1.

The Verdict

So is Our Place non toxic? The cleaner-than-Teflon claim is true and documented. The fully-non-toxic claim is unsupported. The Always Pan 2.0 is a meaningful upgrade over conventional PTFE nonstick, and a reasonable buy if you want a sol-gel ceramic pan and you accept that the coating will degrade in nine to eighteen months and need replacing.

The cleanest alternative if you want a permanent solution is bare stainless steel or cast iron. Both are Tier 1 on the Fair Marrow Standard. Neither is nonstick on day one, but both last decades with basic care.

Buy the Always Pan 2.0 from Our Place direct or on Amazon if the sol-gel coating reads acceptable to you. Skip it if you want full documentation, in which case our Caraway audit is the cleaner Tier 2 alternative with public test reports.

FAQ

Is Our Place Always Pan really PFAS-free?

So Consumer Reports tested the Always Pan against 96 known PFAS compounds in 2022 and detected none of them, per the Consumer Reports investigation. That is the strongest third-party evidence backing the PFAS-free claim. The caveat is that thousands of PFAS compounds exist and a 96-compound panel is a sample, not a complete screen.

What is Thermakind coating made of?

And Our Place says Thermakind is “mainly composed of three natural ingredients: silica, water, and alcohol.” But sol-gel ceramic coatings of this style typically contain additional materials including titanium dioxide nanoparticles, metal oxides, and trace fluorine compounds. Our Place does not publish the complete coating formula.

How long does the Always Pan coating last?

But ceramic sol-gel coatings typically hold nonstick performance for six to twelve months under regular use. The Always Pan 2.0’s Thermakind is rated by Our Place to last 50% longer than the original, which would put it in the nine-to-eighteen-month range. Six-month real-world user reviews of the original showed coating degradation by month six.

Is Our Place safer than Caraway?

So both brands use sol-gel ceramic coatings made in China, and both confirm PFAS-free formulas. The difference is documentation. Caraway publishes third-party test reports for PTFE, PFAS, lead, and cadmium in the surface coating. Our Place does not, citing proprietary information. So Caraway is the more transparent pick at a similar price.

Can nanoparticles leach from the Always Pan?

And Our Place states cured nanoparticles cannot leach into food. But peer-reviewed research, including a 2017 Food Control study by Ntim et al., found ionic titanium, silicon, and aluminum migration from ceramic cookware under acidic cooking conditions. So the brand’s claim and the published research do not match cleanly.