The FDA's Code of Federal Regulations allows for the legal, regulated use of titanium dioxide in food products, under some restrictions.

Because the seller's inventory is small, the manufacturer has no willingness to reduce the price of sales, and the demand for new orders in the market is relatively large.Trend: The load of titanium dioxide enterprises is stable, the willingness to ship at low prices is not strong, and the downstream buyers still have inventory digestion, and the intention to supplement orders in the short term is limited. It is expected that the titanium dioxide market today just needs to stabilize the price, and the market trading atmosphere is more general.

Analyst Insight

Why all of a sudden is there so much interest in the safety of Titanium Dioxide?

Researchers from France and Luxembourg gave E171 (the much more food friendly name for Titanium Dioxide) in Europe and the United States, to lab rats in their drinking water for 100 days.

Of those rats, 40 per cent of the exposed rodents developed “preneoplastic lesions” or precancerous growths. The Titanium Dioxide also inhibited the immune systems of the rats and “accelerated” the growth of the lesions. France’s INRA agricultural research institute, which took part in the study, said in a statement.“These results demonstrate a role in initiating and promoting the early stages of colorectal cancer formation,” though it said no conclusion could be drawn about later phases of cancer, or of any danger to humans……….(not till they test it on us!!)

The results of the study were published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

Preparation of Lithopone:

The main concern with nanoparticles is that they are so tiny that they are absorbed into the skin more than we want them (ideally sunscreen should remain on the surface of the skin). Once absorbed they might form unwanted complexes with proteins and they might promote the formation of evil free radicals. But do not panic, these are concerns under investigation. A 2009 review article about the safety of nanoparticles summarizes this, to date, in-vivo and in-vitro studies have not demonstrated percutaneous penetration of nanosized particles in titanium dioxide and zinc oxide sunscreens. The English translation is, so far it looks like sunscreens with nanoparticles do stay on the surface of the skin where they should be.  

Titanium dioxide remains in many food products in this country because of regulatory folly by the Food and Drug Administration, which allows problematic food ingredients to remain undetected and unreviewed.

Materials

The production of ROS was studied on white blood cells as a model to screen the effect on eukaryotic cells after being exposed to samples and solar simulated irradiation (according to the level of penetration under the skin). For that purpose, the leukocytes were separated from anticoagulated fresh blood using the Ficoll-Hypaque reactive in a well-known technique [33]. Then, 50 μL of suspensions of P25TiO₂NPs (0.2 mg/mL and 0.02 mg/mL), vitaminB2@P25TiO₂NPs (0.2 mg/mL and 0.02 mg/mL) and vitamin B2 (0.2 mg/mL and 0.02 mg/mL) were prepared and mixed with 50 μL of white blood cells suspension. A solution of 3% H₂O₂ was used as positive control and PBS as negative control. Then, the samples were irradiated using the LED panel for 3 and 6 h to simulate the light penetration into the skin. Also, a set of samples was kept in the dark as control. Finally, the ROS were detected through the colorimetric assay employing the nitroblue tetrazolium salt (NBT salt) and the absorbance at 650 nm was measured. The experiment was reproduced twice; the standard deviation was calculated and p-value < 0.05 were considered significant.