JECFA’s risk assessment of titanium dioxide risk released TODAY!!! JECFA re-affirms the safety of TiO2 (INS 171, E171) for use in Foods. Governments around the world need to take note of this JECFA Opinion when assessing TiO2 safety. JECFA's conclusions are summarized in a report which can be downloaded at the following link:
https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/jecfa-risk-assessment-of-titanium-dioxide-risk-released-background-information
The actual downloaded summary report is directly available at the link listed below in this post. JECFA's key summary conclusion was listed as follows:
"In light of the very low oral absorption of INS171, and in the absence of any identifiable hazard associated with INS171 in the diet, the JECFA reaffirmed the ADI “not specified” established in 1969."
This JECFA ADI of "not specified" now shows that, based on a thorough credible scientific re-evaluation by world-class experts, there are no safety concerns with the use of TiO2 in foods. JECFA also made the following statement in their summary report:
"JECFA identified a number of TiO2 test materials that were considered representative of INS171. Further, JECFA recognized that a large number of toxicological studies have been conducted using test materials, including nanoparticles, having size distributions and physico-chemical properties not comparable to INS 171. These studies on non-representative materials were evaluated by JECFA, but it was concluded that they were not relevant to the safety assessment of INS 171."
This shows that many of the key studies on nano-grades of E171 that EFSA prioritized in their evaluation which led to their ban of E171 in Europe were not considered relevant to the JECFA experts! In my opinion, this means that EU regulators and politicians should reconsider their ban of E171 in foods, given this JECFA conclusion and certainly not consider any expansion of their ban to pharmaceuticals in the EU. We will have to wait and see if the EU decides to consider good science and the opinion of the world's leading toxicology experts in JECFA rather than their previous overly precautionary decision based on the flawed EFSA opinion. Stay tuned!!
JECFA did indicate that there still needs to be further research on genotoxicity to answer some outstanding data gaps and questions, but that there was no real evidence of any genotoxicity concerns at this time. A group of industry experts are currently performing some additional studies that should answer any of the outstanding data gaps questions that JECFA had.
https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/food-safety/jecfa/summary-and-conclusions/jecfa-riskassemsent-of-titanium-dioxide-released.pdf?sfvrsn=d43ddb0e_3&download=true