Propionic acid (E280): What the Sources Found

Propionic acid is the preservative the food industry lists as E280. In our table it is low risk: it takes 6 of the 33 additive points off a product's score for a child.

In short

Low risk. 6 of the 33 additive points come off a product that carries it.
No child flag. Nothing below is written about children specifically, so the class is the same at every age.
3 citations from EFSA, Peer-reviewed, FDA, each one below.

What Propionic acid does to a score

A packaged food starts with 33 points for what is in its ingredient list. Propionic acid takes 6 of the 33 additive points off a product's score. Scan the pack in Sito and the score you get is the one for your own child's age, with this additive named in the reasons. How we score has the whole method.

What the sources found

Every classification in our table comes from the citations below, and nothing else. They are quoted as the source wrote them.

EFSA 10.2903/j.efsa.2014.3779
NOAEL 0.3% / LOAEL 1% propionic acid in the diet (90-day dog study, reversible site-of-contact effect); no ADI allocated; concentrations in food at maximum permitted levels are a factor of three below the effect concentration — no safety concern.
Peer-reviewed Tirosh et al., Sci Transl Med 2019; doi:10.1126/scitranslmed.aav0120
Propionate raises glucagon and FABP4 and impairs insulin action in mice and humans.
FDA 21 CFR §184.1081 (propionic acid, GRAS)
GRAS in the US.

Why this class

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.

Our confidence in this row's classification is medium. Medium or low does not mean the evidence is weak; it means something about the row is still being pinned down, usually a regulatory status confirmed from one source rather than two.