Products having titanium dioxide in the EU are no longer needed to carry warnings about most cancers danger, after the European Chemicals Agency (Echa) revoked its classification as a suspected carcinogen. The move follows a June 2025 judgement by the Court of Justice of the European Union and mean that protection data sheets, labelling and packaging necessities for titanium dioxide had been relaxed across industries inclusive of paints, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and food.
The judgement is the recent in a decade-long regulatory debate. In 2016, the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES) proposed that powdered titanium dioxide should be identified as an ‘inhalation carcinogen’. Echa’s Committee for Risk Assessment (RAC) assisted the proposal in 2017, main to the European Commission list the substance as a category 2 suspected carcinogen. This needed products having powdered titanium dioxide to hold the warning ‘H351: suspected of inflicting cancer when inhaled’.
Several producers, downstream customers and importers have initiated legal challenges to that ruling. In November 2022, the General Court of the European Union ruled that the commission had committed a ‘manifest errors’ in the use of scientific proof however failing to show intrinsic carcinogenicity of titanium dioxide. After more appeals from France and the European Commission were disregarded in August 2025, the classification was finally revoked. As a end result, titanium dioxide products are not needed to hold the warning label.
As industries and authorities modify to this transformation, Echa and industry specialists will hold to monitor advances in this area.
