A Portland-based advocacy group has created a searchable online directory to help consumers avoid the hassle of sifting through complex corporate filings to determine if forever chemicals are hiding in their kitchen cookware.

The tool also provides a roadmap for state regulators in Maine, Minnesota or Colorado tasked with enforcing sales restrictions on products that contain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which are often shortened to PFAS.

Maine has increasingly become a national laboratory for PFAS regulation, leading the country with phaseouts of PFAS in consumer goods, food packaging and sludge-based fertilizers. The consumer goods PFAS ban went into effect on Jan. 1.

Forever chemicals have been used for decades to make a range of common household and industrial products resistant to heat, water and grease. They possess a chemical bond so strong they don’t break down in the environment and can build up in the human body over time.

Even trace amounts of certain forever chemicals — as little as four drops in 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools —are linked by the National Institutes of Health to health problems, ranging from compromised immune systems to low birth weights to several types of cancer.

The project to track cookware compliance with Maine’s consumer goods sales ban began as a New Year’s Eve experiment for Emily Carey Perez de Alejo, the executive director of Defend Our Health, a Portland-based public health nonprofit.

On Dec. 31, Carey Perez de Alejo filled up an online shopping cart with 32 different cookware items known to contain PFAS and set the delivery address to the group’s office in Maine. That night, all of the items could be shipped to Maine.

“I waited for the clock to tick over to Jan. 1,” Carey Perez de Alejo said. “When I refreshed my cart the next day, most of the PFAS-containing items had been removed from my cart, but four items remained. That’s what got the ball rolling.”

That initial “test run” evolved into a massive research undertaking that consumed the group’s small staff of five for months. Working with national partners, the team scoured the websites of more than 200 cookware brands to find PFAS disclosures required under California law.

Researchers navigated tiny fonts, broken links and disclosures buried in obscure compliance sections. The effort transformed the difficult-to-find corporate filings into a clean, searchable directory that now covers 210 brands and more than 10,000 products.

In its watchdog role, Defend Our Health found most noncompliance was accidental.

During an early check of 117 companies, the group found 24 brands were still shipping PFAS-laden items to Maine despite the ban, Carey Perez de Alejo said. After she reached out, posing simply as a consumer, nine updated their shipping restrictions within a week.

“We realized education was needed as much if not more than enforcement,” she said.

Defend Our Health has been sharing its findings with regulators in the states with PFAS sales restrictions, including the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. The state invited the nonprofit to do spot checks to help monitor compliance, Carey Perez de Alejo said.

The DEP did not respond to questions about what it has done with Defend Our Health’s data.

The Defend Our Health project reveals that while many major brands like Calphalon and All-Clad still sell products containing PFAS, almost every brand reviewed, including those two cookware titans, offer several PFAS-free options, such as stainless steel or ceramic-coated sets.

PFAS-free pots don’t have to cost more, Carey Perez de Alejo said — $10 options can be found.

National advocates said the directory would probably benefit regulators as much as consumers.

“While there are some laggards, most companies are complying,” said Gretchen Salter, the policy director at Safer States, a national alliance of chemical safety public health groups. “This tool will help regulators identify those laggards and bring them into compliance.”

Cookware manufacturers told the Maine Board of Environmental Protection that their products should be exempt from the sales ban. Some claimed making pots and pans with PFAS substitutes would drive up the prices, while others claimed they could find no PFAS substitute.

Defend Our Health plans to conduct a second sales ban compliance check this month and will then turn its attention to the next frontier of PFAS safety, using the same approach to create compliance databases for children’s art supplies, clothing and cosmetics.

“It becomes so much more powerful when we can unleash the data,” Carey Perez de Alejo said.