How Many Supplements Still Contain Titanium Dioxide?

Titanium dioxide (E171) is a white pigment used to make pills, tablets, and capsule shells look uniformly bright. In 2022 the European Food Safety Authority concluded it could no longer be considered safe as a food additive due to concerns about genotoxicity, and the EU banned it. In the US, the FDA still permits it. We scanned our database of 116,409 supplement labels to see how widespread it remains.

The Headline Number

Roughly 1 in 9 supplements sold in the US still list titanium dioxide in their Other Ingredients. That share has been falling year over year — but the absolute count is still in the tens of thousands.

Which Formats Use It Most

Titanium dioxide concentrates in formats where appearance matters most:

• Coated tablets — by far the worst offender. The glossy white coating is almost always titanium-dioxide-based unless the brand specifically opts out.
• Softgels — used to mask the color of fish oil and other oily fills.
• Two-piece capsules — present in opaque white shells, absent in clear or vegetable-cellulose shells.
• Powders & liquids — almost never contain it.

If avoiding it is a priority, switching from tablets to powders or clear-capsule formats removes most of the exposure.

How We Score It

In our cleanliness model, titanium dioxide is a tier-1 additive — the most penalized category, alongside artificial colors and artificial sweeteners. A product loses 6 points off the 25-point cleanliness score the moment it appears on the label. That single ingredient is often the difference between a product scoring in the 70s and one scoring in the 80s.

For context, see how it interacts with other additives in our common fillers analysis.

Brands That Avoid It Entirely

Every brand on our cleanest brands list has zero products containing titanium dioxide. That is not coincidence — it is the single most impactful ingredient a brand can remove if it wants to climb the cleanliness ranking.

What to Look For on the Label

It will appear under one of these names in the Other Ingredients line:

• Titanium dioxide
• TiO₂
• E171 (mostly on EU-facing labels)
• "Color (titanium dioxide)"

You can filter our database for products that exclude it by browsing supplements scoring 80+ — most of them are titanium-dioxide-free by construction.

Data source: NIH DSLD. Full methodology.