A CBC Marketplace investigation found some food manufacturers are producing snack foods for the Canadian market that contain an ingredient banned in Europe.

That additive, titanium dioxide, was banned in the European Union after a May 2021 European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) review couldn’t rule out that it may cause DNA or chromosomal damage in humans.

“What we concluded was that we could not really exclude the possibility that titanium dioxide can damage the DNA material, the genetic material in the cells,” Camilla Smeraldi, team leader for EFSA’s food additive and flavourings team, told Marketplace in an interview from her office in Parma, Italy. “It’s not something that we should intentionally add to foods.”

  • Phil_in_here
    4·
    9 months ago

    It’s literally what bright white paint is made of. It’s literally called Titanium White or Titanium Dioxide White.

    There’s a whole history of discovering better pigments out of super toxic compounds. Not that titanium dioxide is one of them necessarily.