I fried some potatoes in olive oil in a teflon pan last night and they had a chemical smell and taste. ???!

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How high did u have your heat setting..We never use teflon to fry anything in..to fry means you turn the heat high enough that it can burn the teflon..to be safe I would toss the pan..buy you a cast iron to fry in and also Olive oil is not a high heat oil..it burns very quickly..Use vegetable , sunflower, canola or even peanut oil to fry in..We always fry our potatoes in vegetable oil in a cast iron skillet..The skillet will last forever if taken care of..Never use soap to wash it always rinse in hot water and put back on the stove, turn heat to low and let it heat until all water is evaporated..on some occasions you can use a paper towel to wipe stuff out of it.

This happened to me recently twice.

Two things- either the pan has been washed and not rinsed properly ( throw this out if it was a brand new pan), and some cleaners are really toxic and take loads of rinsing off.

OR the teflon reacted with the olive oil - it has a much lower boiling point than other oils and if you get the pan too hot it can actually release toxins. Too hot olive oil- bad.

olive oil tastes funny to me when it gets real hot, like to fry things. I love olive oil but NOT for frying.
If your teflon pan is not scratched and in tact, that probably was not the problem but I bet the olive oil was.
Try regular veg oil next time.

Normally it should be fine, but if you were cooking at a super high temperature you could have burned the pan and thus resulted in toxic fumes being emitted.

i cook all the time, cast iron skillets are the way to go!

If I were a betting man, I'd bet that your oil was too hot and you "burnt" your olive oil which isn't the best oil for frying.
Try Canola, peanut, or grape seed oil for making fries next time but I do NOT think it was your pan.

you either have few scratches in the pan!
or you may have burnt the oil before frying the ppotato's

if there are scratches visible on the bottom of the pan, you have to discard the pan!

guarantee it was your oil either its spoiled or you had it to high and burned the oil