California becomes first US state to ban 4 potentially harmful chemicals in food | Hacker News Reader

California becomes first US state to ban 4 potentially harmful chemicals in food

cnn.com

47 pointsmanicennui24 comments

I wish you could buy foods without added coloring agents in general. I'm allergic to red 40 and that's found in tons of candy, drinks, and foods. Can't say I've noticed red 3 very often, although I don't eat candy regularly anymore.

Speaking of banning coloring agents, I've read that Europe bans a few colors that are still used in the US. I wish we had more cross-country regulatory agency communications and accountability. Shouldn't both the EU and US regulatory agencies converge upon roughly the same chemical bans after a while? Surely one of the two regulatory bodies has to be most correct?

They follow two different philosophies: EU bans until proven safe, whereas US bans when found dangerous.

Consequently EU rules will be safer.

I think this is a misunderstanding. The EU bans if there is a possible hazard; the US bans based on calculated risk. While it’s possible (but unlikely) there could be cases in which the EU rules are safer, the EU rules also result in harmful, expensive absurdities such as banning GMOs.

There isn't an EU-wide GMO ban, just regulations around import, labelling, isolation distances between GMO and non-GMO crops. Individual EU countries have opted to entirely ban GMOs, but that's another thing entirely.

* red dye No. 3

* potassium bromate

* brominated vegetable oil

* propylparaben

Stopped drinking Mountain Dew in 2003 when I first read about BVO.

Looks like they finally stopped using it in 2020.

Is this another “known to the state of California” that covers basically everything or is this actually a good thing?

There has been lots of discussions as to why the US doesn't already ban the listed chemicals in food, there is minimal impact to the food chain and increasing evidence of harm.

The potential upside far outweighs any downsides.

This is another "known to the state of California" issue, but there's no reason to minimize that as if it means nothing. We only see that language because California is the only state in the USA that takes action about food safety.

Prop 65 is a bit of a shitshow. There seemed to be good intentions, but it ends up being a license to sue (much like the ADA), not a state prohibition on certain chemicals. And if you warn consumers, then you're ok. So you see a lot of signs all over the place as a cover-your-ass move. There are a lot of gray areas about what counts as exposure to some of the chemicals. A license to sue is a terrible way to enforce compliance. You end up with law firms which are advanced forms of ambulance chasers running around trying to find someone on behalf of whom to sue the company or individuals who are breaking the law. Since each case is tried by courts (if it gets to trial) you have a bunch of non-experts (judge and jury) making decisions around technical topics with limited ability to coordinate and learn from previous decisions.

This seems to be different. Food products containing any of the 4 chemicals will be illegal to manufacture, sell or distribute in California. Red dye #4, for example, is already illegal in the EU. This is more of a case of California taking steps to keep up with food safety in Europe ahead of the rest of the US.

It won't be pointless like the prop 65 warnings because these chemicals will be actually banned, not just require disclosure.

I would have thought other states would have banned 4 potentially harmful chemicals in food before, but this is a positive move. I see this as the first steps towards eventually banning 5 and more potentially harmful chemicals in food.

I'm surprised titanium dioxide isn't on the list. It's an additive that, to my knowledge, pretty much just makes colors more vibrant by increasing reflectivity.

Yeah, but are there verified harms that would justify banning it? You're only listing its uses, which aren't of any real concern.

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.

There's lots of additives used in food to make it more visually appealing.

Why single out titanium dioxide?

As a Canadian, I'm always so surprised how little regard the U.S. has for the safety and health of its own citizens.

Another big surprise is that U.S. manufacturers are allowed to say their products contain "zero trans fat" when in fact the amount can be as high as 0.5g / serving! (Which is an incredibly high amount!)

In Canada the law for trans fats is < 0.1g for example. I guess this is what happens when politicians are influenced by corporations who pay them instead of citizens they are supposed to represent!

You are allowed to say cooking oil spray is fat free because the 1/3 of a second of spray serving size allows you to round the fat value to zero.

Please don't post nationalistic flamebait to HN. It leads to flamewars, which is what we're trying to avoid here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: it looks like we had to ask you this at least once before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23735012.

0.5g/serving trans fat threshold is even worse when you consider that there is absolutely no regulation for serving sizes. If a company exceeds the limit on trans fat, they don't have to recall the product, they can just decrease the serving size until trans fat falls below 0.5g, then slap "no trans fat" on the front of the container.

Remember that next time you buy cooking oil, and the serving size is 1 teaspoon. It could be as much as 10% trans fat, and they don't have to tell you.

It’s not that simple. While industrial lobbying is real and terrible, it’s also the will of the people at play.

The 19th century frontier “Let Me Do This Myself” culture and the Cold War “Freedom Heck Yeah” culture are real cultural arteries that make many citizens down here earnestly vote against regulations and protections.

There’s plenty of that in Canada too, although it’s shaped differently and has different political influence.

But yeah, for as much as you or I might see a government as a protector of individuals against exploitation by corporations and other mobs, US governments are usually pretty slow and sloppy about it, if they try at all.

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