Six Years After Dark Waters, Mark Ruffalo Takes the Fight to Your Kitchen With Anti-Plastic Pans Crusade

Mark Ruffalo is back on the chemical beat, this time calling out PFAS in non-stick cookware and putting California leaders on notice. If you saw him go after Teflon in the 2019 movie 'Dark Waters' and thought that was just a role, he is clearly not done with the real thing.

What set this off

Ruffalo amplified a recent New York Times piece about PFAS in kitchen gear and aimed his ask straight at California, tagging Governor Gavin Newsom. His point: convenience should not come with a side of toxic chemicals, and the state should act.

'Please put people ahead of #PFAS @CAGovernor @GavinNewsom. @andrewsimmern is right: we don't need to poison our friends and neighbors to have non-stick pans.'

Mark Ruffalo, Oct 9, 2025

In plain English, he is pushing for tougher rules on the PFAS chemicals used in a lot of non-stick coatings. If you are not up on the acronyms, PFAS are a big family of long-lasting compounds often used to make things slick, stain-proof, or water-resistant. The NYT story flagged how they show up in everyday pans; Ruffalo wants California to put public health first.

If you watched 'Dark Waters,' this tracks

Ruffalo played real-life attorney and advocate Rob Bilott in the 2019 film, which centers on years of legal battles against DuPont over Teflon chemicals. In the movie (based on Bilott's actual crusade, as covered by ABC News), a company's production plants are shown dumping Teflon-linked waste into local waterways, contaminating a town. The fallout hits farmers first — dead or sick livestock — and then families dealing with serious health problems. That storyline clearly left a mark on Ruffalo, because he is still pushing the issue off-screen.

So, are your pans a problem?

Ruffalo's warning targets the plastic-like non-stick film on many pans — the kind designed to keep eggs from sticking — because some of those coatings involve PFAS. The concern, echoed in the reporting he shared, is long-term exposure risk from chemicals that do not break down easily in the environment. Translation: he does not think a slick omelet should come with a forever-chemical trade-off.

He is not a single-issue activist

Ruffalo swings at more than environmental stuff. He blends celebrity reach with a steady stream of political and social advocacy — and yes, not every take lands with everyone. The piece that sparked this also alludes to a dust-up tied to comments about a conservative figure's death; that claim is not verified, so I'm not repeating it here.

• He has criticized President Donald Trump's administration.
• He has been vocal about the Israel-Palestine conflict.
• He has called out U.S. billionaires over what he sees as outsized power and harm.
• He regularly shows up for donation drives, public speaking, and media appearances to push these causes.

Bottom line: Ruffalo is using his Marvel-level megaphone to press California on PFAS in cookware. We will see if Sacramento bites, but he is not letting the issue cool down.