Sodium aluminium silicate (E554): What the Sources Found

Sodium aluminium silicate is the additive the food industry lists as E554. In our table it is high risk: it takes 30 of the 33 additive points off a product's score for a child.

In short

High risk. 30 of the 33 additive points come off a product that carries it.
Flagged for young children. Set only where EFSA’s own exposure assessment shows toddlers or children exceeding or approaching the ADI, or where a regulator used explicitly child-specific language. For a child under 6 it moves one class up.
3 citations from EFSA, Law, each one below.

What Sodium aluminium silicate does to a score

A packaged food starts with 33 points for what is in its ingredient list. Sodium aluminium silicate takes 30 of the 33 additive points off a product's score, and a child under 6 sees it one class higher again. 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 Journal 2020;18(6):6152 — doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2020.6152, Re-evaluation of sodium aluminium silicate (E 554) and potassium aluminium silicate (E 555)
Aluminium exposure from E 554 up to 1.58 mg/kg bw per week (mean) and 2.13 (P95) in children, exceeding the TWI at both mean and high intake; the safety of E 554 could not be assessed due to insufficient toxicological data and physicochemical characterisation.
EFSA Journal 2008;6(7):754 — Safety of aluminium from dietary intake
TWI of 1 mg aluminium/kg bw per week; dietary exposure exceeds the TWI in a significant part of the European population, children in particular.
Law Commission Regulation (EU) No 380/2012, EUR-Lex CELEX:32012R0380
Cut permitted levels for aluminium additives including E 554 for consumer protection, citing exceedance of the TWI by high consumers, especially children.

Why this class

IARC Group 1 or 2A with a dietary exposure route; or EFSA has withdrawn or negated a safety conclusion; or EFSA’s own exposure assessment finds a child age group exceeding the ADI at mean intake; or the substance is banned or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.

Our confidence in this row's classification is high. 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.