Studies in laboratory rats during the early 1970s linked saccharin with the development of bladder cancer. For this reason, Congress mandated that further studies of saccharin be performed and required that all food containing saccharin bear the following warning label: “
Use of this product may be hazardous to your health. This product contains saccharin, which has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals.”
Subsequent studies in rats showed an increased
incidence of
urinary bladder cancer at high
doses of saccharin, especially in male rats. However, mechanistic studies (studies that examine how a substance works in the body) have shown that these results apply only to rats. Human
epidemiology studies (studies of patterns, causes, and control of diseases in groups of people) have shown no consistent evidence that saccharin is associated with bladder cancer incidence.
Because the bladder tumors seen in rats are due to a mechanism not relevant to humans and because there is no clear evidence that saccharin causes cancer in humans, saccharin was delisted in 2000 from the U.S. National
Toxicology Program’s
Report on Carcinogens, where it had been listed since 1981 as a substance reasonably anticipated to be a human
carcinogen (a substance known to cause cancer). More information about the delisting of saccharin is available at
http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/roc/ele...ppend/appb.pdf on the Internet. The delisting led to legislation, which was signed into law on December 21, 2000, repealing the warning label requirement for products containing saccharin.
Bookmarks