The process breaks Teflon into harmless carbon and sodium fluoride.

Inside a sealed steel container known as a ball mill, sodium metal fragments are ground with Teflon which causes them to react at room temperature. The process breaks the strong carbon–fluorine bonds in Teflon, converting it into harmless carbon and sodium fluoride, a stable inorganic salt.

The researchers then showed that the sodium fluoride recovered in this way can also be used directly, without purification, to create other valuable fluorine-containing molecules. These include compounds used in pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, and other fine chemicals.

Edit: @SomeDumbBug commented:

PFAs are what has been used to create and apply Teflon to surfaces. Teflon itself isn't the problem, it's the PFAs that are the problem and the "forever chemical". All the same, this is good news, but it may be massively missleading to people not aware that Teflon isn't dangerous. You can eat Teflon if you wanted to, it's not what's building up inside your body. Plastics and PFAs are. And we're back to the old days, blood donating/letting is an effective way to reduce the amount in your body.

https://phys.org/news/2025-10-chemists-green-recycle-teflon.html