Sunset yellow FCF (E110)

Names on a label

• E110
• E 110
• Sunset yellow FCF
• Orange Yellow S
• CI 15985

Labels outside Europe often print the number on its own, without the E.

What regulators and scientists say

• EU law requires foods containing it to carry the words “may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.”¹
• EFSA set an acceptable daily intake of 4 mg per kilogram of body weight per day (June 26, 2014). For a 70 kg (154 lb) adult, that’s about 280 mg a day.²
• The FDA permits it as a color additive by regulation (21 CFR 74.706).³
• IARC classifies it as not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans (Group 3, 1987).⁴

An acceptable daily intake is, in EFSA’s words, “an estimate of the amount of a substance in food or drinking water that can be consumed daily over a lifetime without presenting an appreciable risk to health.”⁵

IARC’s groups “indicate the strength of the evidence as to whether an agent is capable of causing cancer,” but they don’t measure how likely cancer is at a given level of exposure.⁶