Titanium dioxide
Why we leave it out.
The short version.
We've made makeup without titanium dioxide since long before it was a talking point. Here's why we made that call — and where to read the long version when you want it.
When I started MG Naturals, I had one rule: I wouldn't put anything on my children's skin that I didn't want on my own.
And the more I learned about titanium dioxide, the less comfortable I was using it.
This page is the short version of why.
What regulators have actually said.
Plainly, and without the scary bits inflated.
World Health Organization · IARC
Listed as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B).
That classification is based on inhaling titanium dioxide as a fine powder, drawn largely from animal studies — the human evidence is limited. It's the same category as things like aloe vera extract and pickled vegetables, which is worth keeping in perspective.
France 2020 · European Union 2022
Banned as a food additive across the EU.
France removed titanium dioxide (E171) from food from January 2020, and the EU followed with a Europe-wide food ban in 2022, after its food-safety authority concluded it couldn't rule out concerns about genotoxicity when the particles are eaten.
The honest caveat
It isn't a closed verdict.
The EU also tried to classify the powder as a suspected inhalation carcinogen in 2020 — but that was challenged and annulled by the EU courts, so it no longer stands. And regulators including the FDA, Health Canada and Australia's own FSANZ still consider it safe in the products they oversee. The science is genuinely unsettled.
For us, unsettled was enough. We'd rather formulate around the question than ask you to wait for the answer.
Where this started: a steel roof.
Years ago, thousands of newly installed Bluescope roofs started shedding their paint — not quite the "lasts a lifetime" promise. On investigation, the culprit was sunscreen residue left by the installers' fingertips.
The titanium dioxide in that sunscreen, activated by sunlight, was generating free radicals that broke down the panel's coating.
I won't tell you your foundation is doing to your face what it did to those roofs — skin isn't a steel panel, and I'm a formulator, not a scientist. But it was the thing that made me want to understand the ingredient properly.
The more I read, the more I decided I'd rather make it without.
So we leave it out — every product, every shade, every batch. We've done it for more than a decade.
If you want the full picture — what titanium dioxide is, where it shows up, what regulators around the world have said, and what the research actually shows — it's all laid out with citations in the Library.
The Directory covers other categories too — food, supplements, sunscreen and more — that we've checked and found without it. Once you've decided to avoid something, it shouldn't be this hard to find alternatives.
This page reflects our formulation philosophy and the information available to us at the time of publication. Titanium dioxide regulation continues to evolve, and we update this page as the picture changes. Nothing here is intended as medical or health advice.
