Comment by 0xcde4c3db
1 year ago
There are no verified harms that I know of, but I believe the concern is that emerging science on nanoparticles generally and titanium dioxide in particular has changed the perception of risk vs. benefit in some contexts. It's turned into essentially weighing "brighter Skittles" vs. "this suddenly looks more like a potential carcinogen than previously thought" [1].
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2011-160/pdfs/2011-160.pdf
Looks like this is fully about breathing airborne TiO2, which doesn't seem like a big problem if it's fully within the food dye
How confident are you, expressed as a percentage, that the TiO2 is "fully" (i.e. 100%) within the food dye when you bite down on a stale bit of candy coating?
I'm not really confident at all since the paper you linked doesn't mention anything about it and I'm no expert in small particles.
My intuition though, given this line from the paper:
> TiO2 is used extensively in many commercial products, including paints and varnishes, cosmetics, plastics, paper, and food as an anticaking or whitening agent.
is that TiO2 in food where it is primarily eaten might less risky than existing exposure in i.e. paint.
Like I said, I'm no expert, but nearly any small particle (flour, ground spices, SiO2, etc) are serious occupational risks for airborne exposure but are not considered to be dangerous to consume.
Given this, the paper you linked isn't very convincing to me about needing to ban TiO2 in food, but is yet more info that nearly every industrial worker probably needs PAPRs to avoid serious increase in cancer risk from small airborne particulates.