Warning: Pyrex has been reformulated and is dangerous

It has been nearly three years since ConsumerAffairs.com first reported that consumers were being cut and burned by exploding Pyrex bakeware. The company was quick to deny the problem and government safety regulators seemed untroubled by the reports.

Three years later, not much has changed. Many consumers still rely on Pyrex bakeware for everyday cooking chores, trusting that the baking dishes can safely go from the oven to the countertop to the freezer.

But more than 300 complaints filed by ConsumerAffairs.com readers detail frightening stories of these dishes spontaneously shattering during temperature changes, propelling scalding glass shards and food 15 feet or more, sending some consumers to the hospital with tendon and nerve damage and serious burns and leaving others with property damage and, at the very least, a ruined dinner and a huge mess in their kitchen.

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-ramon

That's an interesting looong article. I will definitely change the way I use Pyrex things. I would not buy any in the future.

Hi,

Pyrex is a low expansion glass, though it does not mean it cannot break. If the glass gets stressed, nicked or chipped and you put it on a cold-to-hot or hot-to-cold, the sudden temperature changes can cause it to crack, break or shatter. I talked to someone from Pyrex who said the worst is hot oven to cold surface, he recommended putting it on a towel will reduce the chance breakage.

My favorite pots are the Corning clear view pots. I like being able to glance across the room to see if it is simmering happily or about to bust into a boil. From time to time the pots have broken due to impact as well as the lids.

The glass lid on my stockpot recently shattered. A month or so before, I had dropped it bending the lid lip a little bit. I was making stock, the lid was very hot when I lifted it and put it on the edge of my kitchen sink. It made a funny noise and shattered. I am certain it was related to my dropping the lid earlier and caused a stress or crack that needed the hot-cold shock to finish the job.

I really see no reason to avoid Pyrex.

Regards,

Cathy-

Excellent response. My first thought was that, given the millions of Pyrex products out there, 300 complaints since December, 2005, which may or may not be due to a product defect in Pyrex, is not a lot and certainly not evidence of a product defect, IMHO.

Here's some food for thought from the website:

consumeraffairs.com wrote:Who We Are

ConsumerAffairs.com is a private, non-govermental entity that empowers consumers by providing a forum for their complaints and a means for them to be contacted by lawyers if their complaints have legal merit. Your complaints and comments may be published, shared with the news media and reviewed by attorneys at no cost to you. See the FAQ for more information.

Here's some more from the FAQs on the website:

consumeraffairs.com wrote:Are you hooked up with lawyers in some way?

Yes, lawyers read all of the complaints submitted to us by consumers. On occasion, the lawyers will find something they believe could form the basis of a class action suit on behalf of consumers. If a consumer has indicated on their complaint form that they want to be contacted by a lawyer, they then research the issue and, now and then, contact the consumer and file suit on his behalf. Since our founding, hundreds of class action suits have been filed on behalf of consumers. We are not a party to those actions and do not profit from them.

The alarmist, biased tone to the article was a dead giveaway: Sounds like the site is a conduit for plaintiffs' lawyers looking for business.

* * *

I'll comfortably continue to use my Pyrex, thank you very much.

I've never had a problem with Pyrex, but all of mine is vintage from my mother's kitchen and flea markets.

Funny, though - this is all over the web, so I took it to Snopes. Nothing. It's just like the Teflon scare a while back.

How the heck do you reformulate tempered glass? All glass is dangerous but so are knives. I've heard of people getting hurt by knives so maybe we should ban those too.

Well said Cathy! I've been telling people for years now that if you don't treat your Pyrex right, it won't work correctly. A lot of people stack them without cushioning or use the wrong utensils, which causes small scratches and chips in the product. Or they will use some abrasive while cleaning, which again causes small scratches in the product. Once the product is compromised, the tempered properties are lost and it is must more susceptible to breakage. But it's so much easier to blame someone else when things don't work correctly.

I used to have the Corning ware pots and they were great! Same issue though; you had to treat them nice. Some even had a bit of non-stick surface on the bottom (frying pans). I'm a bit clumsy and broke several of them. Gave the rest to a friend and she's still using them today!

Don't even start me on the Teflon stuff. I'm sure it's dangerous if you put a pan on the stove/in the oven without food in it and let it get *real* hot. Heck, if my bird can survive me making homemade mole in the middle of winter with all the windows closed, I don't think the Teflon will do it!

Look, if I thought this was just an interesting urban legend, I'd have posted it on LinkTH, perhaps with a caveat, perhaps not, trusting to your-all's instinct. The point is, Pyrex has been reformulated, and is not your Mother's Pyrex anymore. Surprise! I've abused Pyrex to no end in a lab and at home and I do not trust anything new with a Pyrex name, at least the way I used to.

I had a Corning clear view pot Cathy mentions upthread -- stove top to oven and back. I loved it for stews, and especially rice type dishes like arroz con pollo. You could see the liquid level and its state of evaporation. It sucked for pasta though -- it stuck to all sides. One day, the electricity was down, and I was heating multiple pots of water on the stove for Baby B's bath. I dropped the Corning pot, it hit the bathroom tile, and I lost her. Well, not B, but the pot.

I miss her.

-ramon

The January 2011 issue of Consumer Reports has an absolutely damning, very thorough report on problems with American-made Pyrex bakeware. Their conclusion: the federal consumer products safety agency should immediately undertake a full and complete investigation of problems with these products.

European Pyrex and French heat-resistant counterparts were much less troublesome.

Geo

I've had two pyrex's explode on me in the past year. One time it was when using an electric stove, I took the dish out of the oven and put it on the stove top, of course forgetting that the burner was on. It sat long enough and eventually, "POW!" it sounded like a gun had gone off. Luckily none of the half dozen or so people standing in the kitchen caught any in their eye, but I did get a minor cut and there was glass in every corner of the kitchen. I accept blame for this, but still it has turned me off of using pyrex.. I simply don't see the benefit over metal and even if there were a slight advantage to baking in pyrex, its not worth having a potential pipe bomb in the kitchen.

The second time I had used the pyrex to bake in and again put it on the stove top from the oven. This time it was a gas range and the burner was most certainly not on and had not been on. After 3-5 minutes of cooling on the star it shattered.. not in as dramatic of a fashion as the first one, but it's not fun cleaning up broken glass and my food was ruined. All I can figure that happened is the parts in contact with the metal star cooled at a different rate than those exposed to the air. This time I will not accept the blame, pyrex is clearly just too fragile to be taken seriously as a tool in the kitchen.


p.s. In a standard professional kitchen's arsenal you will pretty much never see glass, tempered or not. There is a reason for this. Save the glass cookware for Rachel Ray enthusiasts.

I have new pyrex and old pyrex. The new pyrex is brittle and does not seem as solid and made well as what I have from long ago. As a matter of fact, I have a pyrex bowl I got from my old landlord on Taylor St. and it has to be forty years old. I was washing it and remarking how it felt as compared to the new pyrex. I think I might get rid of the new stuff and look in some thrift shops to see about getting some old. People are always off loading perfectly good corning wear and pyrex at thrift shops. You can pretty much tell if its old or new by looking at it carefully. I won't be making my Christmas potatoes in the new pyrex. I'll make them in corning wear french white. Would not want a big oops on that day.

Mhays wrote:Funny, though - this is all over the web, so I took it to Snopes. Nothing. It's just like the Teflon scare a while back.

Snopes now has an entry about Pyrex:

Exploding Pyrex

It was updated this past week for the new Consumer Reports article cited above.

To be fair to Pyrex, which some of us seem to be using as a brand name and some just as a general term for glass cookware, this thread should note that similar problems exist with glass cookware from Anchor Hocking. I use my glass baking dishes a lot, but after the CR article I've taken to putting a dishtowel down on the counter before placing them there.

After reading an article where Consumer Reports gave a bad review of a certain brand of All-SEASON tires (tires that I have on both my car and SUV and LOVE) that they compared to several other brands of SNOW tires, I can't help but loose faith in their testing abilities. To me, that's like comparing a pea shooter to a Howitzer, and is very irresponsible reporting. I made my Mom a batch of my baked ziti and I took the Pyrex dish right from the gas oven, and put it across two burners grates on top of the stove that hadn't been used that day, and I had NO issues. A co-worker and I were discussing that we've both noticed a trend in this country over the last 30 - 40 years where no one is willing to take responsibility for their own actions. If you use something the wrong way, or without using the smallest amount of "common" sense, there can/will be consequences.

Just my $0.02

Is the purported issue resulting from the thickness of the glass, or is it simply dependent upon the formulation of the product? I wasn't clear on that from the above info. I am wondering as I have a few Fire King pieces (Fire King being a Pyrex knockoff often found in vintage stores; no idea if it's still being made) that are considerably lighter in weight than my vintage Pyrex. I'm not really a fan of the Fire King stuff - not as solid, less attractive patterns - so tossing them wouldn't be a big loss.

Old fireking can be valuable so I would not toss. I don't think it is the same as the exploding pyrex especially if its vintage. Fireking came in a light jade color and also white painted with flowers. Many people collect this so taking it to a thrift shop is a good idea. I saw some perfectly good vintage pyrex ware at the Wise Penny thrift shop last week when I went there.

We have had Pyrex baking dishes for 30 years that we still use all the time. I did have a problem with a 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup that I bought a couple of years ago, that had a chip out of the handle that I didn't notice when I bought it, and which I fully expected to cause a problem later on. One day I reached into the cupboard to grab it and it shattered into a thousand pieces. Very impressive! There were pieces of glass everywhere.

MikeW665 wrote: A co-worker and I were discussing that we've both noticed a trend in this country over the last 30 - 40 years where no one is willing to take responsibility for their own actions. If you use something the wrong way, or without using the smallest amount of "common" sense, there can/will be consequences.

Just my $0.02

Accidents and lapses in judgment happen. My problem with Pyrex and similar glass cookware is that the fallout from accidents and lapses in judgment involving them can be very dangerous, yet I fail to see what advantage they have over comparable bake ware made out of something besides glass. A metal baking dish will never break when dropped, it will never explode (sending razor sharp projectiles through the air) when unevenly heated/cooled, and you can safely do just about anything with it without a worry. So yes, with some common sense and a quick read of the pamphlet that comes with your pyrex, you should be fine.. but why take the risk? Do you really want a potential glass grenade in your home?

This seems like old news to me. The potential for fracture in heat-tempered glass, especially when exposed to high-heat point sources (as when you put a Pyrex dish down on a hot metal electric stove burner), has been publicized for as long as Pyrex has beenon the market. Don't use a metal roasting rack in a ceramic dish. Don't put a hot Pyrex casserole dish down on a metal serving tray. Metal and hot glass - materials with very different thermal conductivities - shouldn't come into contact, our moms knew that.

Heat-tempered glass is also prone to explosive fracture if dropped on a very hard surface, if dropped into cold water, or (as imsscott found out) if microfractured.

Nonetheless, glass and other ceramic cookware do have some distinct advantages over metallic cookware, among them being that they are microwave safe, that they do not react with acidic foods, and that they hold heat better. The latter two are true of ceramic-coated cast iron as well. Can't say if the first is true, and not willing to blow up my microwave to find out.

Katie wrote:Metal and hot glass - materials with very different thermal conductivities - shouldn't come into contact, our moms knew that.

Just on this point...It's always been my understanding that when pouring cold water into a hot glass (for instance, a glass that's just come out of the dishwasher, or hand-washed in hot water), it's a good idea to put a metal spoon into the glass first. Can't explain the science, except the metal spoon acts as some kind of "buffer" between the temperature difference of the contents of the glass and the glass itself. So unless I'm wrong about that, it's one time when metal and hot glass should come in contact.

I think that's true, riddlemay, and the same is true for pouring hot water into a cold glass; a metal spoon acts as a thermal buffer between the liquid and the glass, and also disperses the liquid around the glass as you pour it in, allowing a larger surface area of the glass to warm up (or cool down) at one time. I personally would be a little cautious about dropping a hot metal spoon into an empty cold glass or a cold metal spoon into an empty hot glass. I think it would be safer to hold the spoon without touching the glass and pour the liquid over the spoon.

toria wrote:Old fireking can be valuable so I would not toss. I don't think it is the same as the exploding pyrex especially if its vintage. Fireking came in a light jade color and also white painted with flowers. Many people collect this so taking it to a thrift shop is a good idea. I saw some perfectly good vintage pyrex ware at the Wise Penny thrift shop last week when I went there.

Etsy has a lot of this stuff as well http://www.etsy.com/shop/JunkandHowe?section_id=7624606

I work in a lab: interestingly, someone dropped a Pyrex bottle yesterday from less than 3 feet in height and it shattered. I know I've dropped a bottle in the past from waist level and it just bounced off the floor.

Obviously not the most scientific comparison, but it did make me wonder about the reformulation...

Puppy wrote:I work in a lab: interestingly, someone dropped a Pyrex bottle yesterday from less than 3 feet in height and it shattered. I know I've dropped a bottle in the past from waist level and it just bounced off the floor.

Obviously not the most scientific comparison, but it did make me wonder about the reformulation...

Many years ago, I decided to purchase a brand of china that was shatter resistant for our patient and our cafeteria china. The salesman came in and had each on of my employees pick up a plate and drop it onto the kitchen floor. They all bounced and eventually landed on the floor unscathed for the experience.

A few weeks later, my fiancee and future in-laws came to the hospital so that I could show them the kitchen that I ran. I said, "Hey, you have to check out these new plates I bought." I pick up a plate, drop it on the floor, and it shatters to a thousand pieces. Undetered, I picked up a second plate and dropped it on the floor with the same results. Needless to say, they thought I was losing it.

There is a difference between shatter resistant and shatter proof.

jlawrence01 wrote:

Puppy wrote:I work in a lab: interestingly, someone dropped a Pyrex bottle yesterday from less than 3 feet in height and it shattered. I know I've dropped a bottle in the past from waist level and it just bounced off the floor.

Obviously not the most scientific comparison, but it did make me wonder about the reformulation...

Many years ago, I decided to purchase a brand of china that was shatter resistant for our patient and our cafeteria china. The salesman came in and had each on of my employees pick up a plate and drop it onto the kitchen floor. They all bounced and eventually landed on the floor unscathed for the experience.

A few weeks later, my fiancee and future in-laws came to the hospital so that I could show them the kitchen that I ran. I said, "Hey, you have to check out these new plates I bought." I pick up a plate, drop it on the floor, and it shatters to a thousand pieces. Undetered, I picked up a second plate and dropped it on the floor with the same results. Needless to say, they thought I was losing it.

There is a difference between shatter resistant and shatter proof.

At least you weren't hosting an infomercial for the product.

There's a follow-up in the October 2011 Consumer Reports. After the January report, 121 readers sent in new breakage incidents, and CR found another 24 new complaints to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. CR would like to see warnings imprinted on the glass itself, rather than on the packaging that most consumers throw out.

Thats why a lot of people like old pyrex dishes and shop for vintage items at Etsy and ebay. If you have old pyrex, or inherit it, keep it as it is better than the new stuff. The old pyrex was a real workhorse.

Additional verification.

Several materials scientists, though, have concluded that various lines of soda lime silicate cookware leave something to be desired. Just running the numbers on the physics of the glass, they found that the temperature change needed to break borosilicate glass is more than 300 degrees F, while soda lime silicate glass will shatter after a change of just 99 degrees F. Water boils at 212 degrees F, so you can see how pouring boiling water into a soda lime silicate measuring cup would produce explosively different results than pouring it into a borosilicate one. ”Even at modest kitchen temperatures,” the scientists write, “there is a definite possibility of thermal shock fracture.”

My understanding is that world kitchen, who now is the owner of the consumer pyrex brand, has two formulas. The older formula is still sold in europe, but the newer formula is sold in the US.
My experience is that the old pyrex, when it was dropped exactly right, would shatter leaving shards everythwere. Very small shards. This has happened to be at least a dozen times overthe years.

exvaxman wrote:My understanding is that world kitchen, who now is the owner of the consumer pyrex brand, has two formulas. The older formula is still sold in europe, but the newer formula is sold in the US.
My experience is that the old pyrex, when it was dropped exactly right, would shatter leaving shards everythwere. Very small shards. This has happened to be at least a dozen times overthe years.

Hi,

I am in the glass business, as in optical production. A lot of optical glass has been reformulated in the last few years to remove lead and other materials due to EPA regulations.

I met a competitor to Pyrex at a trade show. I asked them about this brittleness now associated with Pyrex also known as low-expansion glass. Any reformulation was dictated by EPA rules. He felt while there was a perception of brittleness, he didn't find it significantly different.

We then got into a discussion of canning jars. He did warn me off of jars manufactured in China. I didn't get the particulars, because a customer showed up. I understand this, because I was largely there kicking tires.

Glass will break.

Regards,