2023 FDA Science Forum
Analysis of Silicon Dioxide Food Additives
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Contributing OfficeCenter for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
Abstract
Amorphous silicon dioxide is an approved food additive (21 CFR 172.480) in the U.S., mainly used as an anticaking agent in powdered food products and as a stabilizer in beer production. Despite the ubiquity of amorphous silicon dioxide in food applications, there is limited data on the particle size distribution of commercially available amorphous silicon dioxide sold for this food additive use. This work describes the characterization of six commercially available food-grade SiO2 powders prepared for analysis using four different sample preparation procedures (shaking, sonication, shaking+filtration, and sonication+filtration). In this work, dynamic light scattering is used to measure particle size distribution, electron microscopy for imaging, and single-particle inductively coupled mass spectrometry (sp-ICP-MS) for measuring the concentration of nanosized materials present in silicon dioxide sold for food additive uses. These results will enable the US FDA to address current knowledge gaps on the presence of nanosized particles in this commercial food additive and such as particle size and morphology.
