The additive risk table

This is the whole table Sito scores with. It holds 253 additives, each in one of four classes. Each has its own page with the citations that put it there. There are 597 citations in all, to EFSA, the FDA, IARC, OEHHA, named EU and US laws, agency reviews, and peer-reviewed studies. It is published because a classification nobody outside the company can check is not evidence. Every row is searchable and has its own link, and you can download the whole file. The classes are a mechanical application of published regulatory findings, not our opinion of an ingredient. They feed one third of the Sito score. Nothing here is a claim that a product is unsafe.

How often do these additives turn up on a real shelf? We counted, in the study: what we found across 3,000 scanned products. Half of those products list at least one additive. The child-flagged additive met most often is a phosphate, not a dye.

How to read a row

• High risk IARC Group 1 or 2A with a dietary exposure route; or EFSA has withdrawn or negated a safety conclusion; or EFSA's own exposure assessment finds a child age group exceeding the ADI at mean intake; or the substance is banned or formally being phased out for food use by the EU, by the US FDA, or under a US state law. −30 points on the additive axis.
• Moderate risk IARC Group 2B; or an EFSA re-evaluation that flagged genotoxicity data gaps, found safety could not be assessed on the available data, or cut the ADI citing child exposure; or an EU harmonised classification of the substance as a reproductive or developmental hazard; or an EU withdrawal of one authorised food use while others remain; or an OEHHA/Proposition 65 listing; or membership of the Southampton-six colourants. −15 points.
• Low risk A credible adverse or precautionary signal that stops short of every Moderate and High criterion: peer-reviewed adverse findings not yet reflected in regulatory status, an exposure exceedance confined to high-percentile or single-event estimates, or a precautionary regulatory step short of those criteria — a reduced ADI, a data limitation noted without an adverse conclusion, a narrowed or conditioned authorisation, or a child-focused assessment or school-food law that covers the additive as part of a class. −6 points.
• No risk identified Clean current EFSA and FDA status. No deduction. 137 of the 253 rows are here, and they are the most important ones: they exist so that unfamiliar can never quietly mean bad.

A row carrying higher concern for young children (EFSA) moves one class up for a child under 6. A row gets that flag in two cases only. In the first, EFSA's own exposure assessment shows toddlers or children exceeding or approaching the ADI. In the second, a regulator used explicitly child-specific language. 76 of the 253 rows carry it. No row in the "no risk identified" class is flagged. So a clean additive can never be promoted into a deduction, and there is no tier above High.

Each row also records our confidence in the classification itself: high, medium or low. You can see it on the additive's own page, with its citations. Medium or low does not mean the evidence is weak. It means something about the row is still being pinned down. Usually that is a regulatory status we have confirmed from one source rather than two.

Why some dyes are Moderate and others are Low

This is the split people write to us about, so it is worth stating plainly. It is not chemistry, and we do not describe it as chemistry. The six dyes actually tested in the Southampton trial carry the EU child-warning label. They sit at Moderate. Dyes never tested in any child trial, with clean current EFSA status, sit at Low. They are flagged, because a California child-health assessment and school-food laws cover them as a class. But they are not moved up to a finding no child trial supports. Neither Southampton mix contained a blue or a green dye. The researchers behind the California assessment say plainly that no suitable studies of green or blue dyes exist. So Red 40 (E129), Yellow 5 (E102), Yellow 6 (E110), Quinoline Yellow (E104), Carmoisine (E122) and Ponceau 4R (E124) are Moderate. Blue 1 (E133), Blue 2 (E132) and Green 3 (E143) are Low.

All nine are part of the FDA's voluntary phase-out, which the agency has targeted "by the end of 2027". They are legally approved today, and we never say otherwise. More generally, we do not call any additive, product or brand "toxic", "dangerous", "hazardous", "harmful" or "unsafe". Where an IARC or Proposition 65 entry is scoped to inhalation, we never render it as a claim about eating it. That applies to titanium dioxide (E171) and talc (E553).

Additives we have written up in full

A row gives you the class, the child flag and the citations. For the additives parents ask about most, we also write a page. It answers the question in plain words and says where the regulators disagree with each other. It also shows what the additive does to a score for a younger child.

• Is red dye 40 bad for kids? Why "banned in Europe" is wrong, and what the warning label actually is.
• Is potassium sorbate safe for kids? One we take no points off for, and the toddler exposure work behind that.

Download the table

Both files carry every row, every class, every child flag, every confidence value and all 597 citations. The CSV is in long format: one row per citation, 597 rows in total, with the additive's fields repeated. That way it opens usefully in a spreadsheet. The JSON is one object per additive, with its citations nested.

One field is not published: our internal review note on each row. It is working copy, written for us rather than for a reader. A filtered version of it would hide exactly the rows where we argued hardest. Everything that makes up the table itself is here in full: the classes, the flags, the confidence values and all the citations. Table version v1.3, generated 2026-08-14.

The table

253 additives, 597 citations (EFSA 308, FDA 126, Law 86, Peer-reviewed 32, IARC 18, OEHHA 14, OFF taxonomy 8, Agency review 5). That is a mean of 2.36 per row, and at least one on every row. Search by E-number, name or category. Every row has a permanent link of the form sito.kids/additives#e473.

Sources, licences and corrections

The classifications are ours. The findings behind them are not, and each is attributed on its own row. EFSA OpenFoodTox and the EFSA Journal are CC BY 4.0 and attributed. FDA's Substances Added to Food inventory and 21 CFR are US public domain. IARC monographs and OEHHA Proposition 65 listings are cited by volume and listing date. Agency review rows cite WHO/FAO JECFA evaluations and national food-agency advisories by meeting or advisory date. EU and US legal instruments are cited by name and date, and contested or enjoined provisions are described as contested, not as settled law. The Open Food Facts additives taxonomy is used to validate tags, and is cross-checked against the primary sources. The 8 rows citing it do so to record where that taxonomy is stale or disagrees with the current opinion. We never present a regulator's reference value as that regulator endorsing or condemning a product.

The How we score page shows how this table feeds a product's score: the weights, the thresholds, and the on-device per-child layer. Where the product data itself comes from is on Where our food data comes from.

If a row is wrong, tell us. Brands, journalists, dietitians and parents can write to berkay@sitonutri.com with the E-number and the source we missed. A correction we accept is dated, applied to the table, and reaches every parent who scans a product containing that additive next. We would rather hear it than not.