Titanium dioxide is banned in the EU and legal in the US. Both looked at the same data.

Titanium dioxide is a whitener. It makes icing opaque, coatings bright, and pale things paler. It is also the clearest example of two competent regulators reading one evidence base and reaching opposite conclusions.

What happened

In 2021 the European Food Safety Authority concluded it could no longer consider titanium dioxide safe as a food additive. The EU ban followed in 2022.

The US Food and Drug Administration continues to permit it, within limits that have been in place for decades.

Neither agency was working from secret data. They largely read the same studies.

The disagreement is about genotoxicity

The pivotal issue was whether titanium dioxide can damage DNA — and specifically whether that possibility could be ruled out.

EFSA's position was that it could not be. The available studies had limitations, particle size distribution in food-grade material includes a nanoparticle fraction, and absorption is low but not zero. Given a genotoxicity question that could not be closed, EFSA declined to set an acceptable daily intake, because you cannot define a safe daily dose for something that might damage DNA at any dose.

The FDA's position, broadly, is that the evidence does not demonstrate harm at permitted levels, and that the studies raising concern have methodological problems that make them a weak basis for withdrawing an approval.

Both of those are defensible

This is the part worth sitting with. One agency asked "has safety been established?" and answered no. The other asked "has harm been established?" and answered no.

Those are different questions, and the same evidence can honestly produce a different answer to each. The gap between them is not a scientific dispute so much as a difference in where the burden of proof sits when a question stays open.

What it means practically

If you are in the EU you will not encounter it in food. If you are in the US you will, mostly in confectionery, coatings and some supplements — and you can avoid it by reading labels, since it is declared.

It is also worth noticing that it does nothing nutritionally. It is there to make food look a particular way. When an ingredient carries an unresolved question and delivers only an aesthetic benefit, the cost-benefit is easier to evaluate than usual.

The titanium dioxide report sets both regulatory positions side by side with what each concluded. It is the clearest case on the site of why "is it approved?" needs the follow-up question "by whom?"