CSPI’s Chemical Cuisine is the web’s definitive rating of the chemicals used to preserve foods and affect their taste, texture, or appearance. Besides titanium dioxide, the group recommends avoiding artificial sweeteners like aspartame, acesulfame potassium, and sucralose, as well as synthetic food dyes like Yellow 5 and Red 3. CSPI and others have recently asked the Food and Drug Administration to ban the latter dye in foods and ingested drugs because the FDA has already determined that it is a carcinogen unsafe for use in cosmetics.

One of the main challenges that manufacturers face when it comes to buff percentage is ensuring consistency. Variations in the level of coating on titanium dioxide particles can lead to differences in color, opacity, and other properties in the final product. This can be especially problematic in industries such as paint and coatings, where consistency is critical for achieving the desired results.