CI 77891

The letters in the code are not a European abbreviation at all: CI stands for Colour Index, the international naming system for colorants maintained jointly by the Society of Dyers and Colourists and the AATCC. The five digits are a Colour Index Constitution Number, and 77891 is the number assigned to titanium dioxide; the same pigment carries the industrial designation Pigment White 6. Two consequences follow. A Colour Index number is not an EU invention — EU cosmetics law merely refers to a register it does not own. And the number is an identifier, not a permission: it says which substance is present, never whether that substance may be used.

Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 allows colorants to be declared by their Colour Index number, which is why EU ingredient lists print the code where other markets spell out the substance. One material therefore travels under six parallel names: Colour Index number 77891 (colorant nomenclature); the INCI name Titanium Dioxide (cosmetic ingredient nomenclature); CAS 13463-67-7 (chemical registry); EC 236-675-5 (EU substance inventory); E 171 (EU food additive numbering); and Pigment White 6 (industrial pigment index). A seventh layer sits outside cosmetics entirely: ISO 591-1:2000 is the international standard designation for titanium dioxide pigments for paints, and a technical data sheet quoting that standard is describing a coatings grade, not a cosmetic declaration.

Behind all these designations sits a single, simple compound: titanium dioxide, formula TiO₂, molar mass 79.87 g/mol, recorded under CAS 13463-67-7 in PubChem CID 26042 and in the NIST WebBook. Crystal structure, particle size and surface treatment vary widely between commercial grades, and those distinctions are set out with the chemical and physical base data. One formal detail belongs to the naming layer and is picked up below: Annex IV, entry 143 borrows its purity criteria from Commission Directive 95/45/EC, the E 171 food specification, which is where the two numbering systems visibly touch.

The code sits at the bottom of the panel, and that position is itself information. INCI ordering rules place colorants last irrespective of quantity, so a pigment present at a fraction of a percent and one present at twenty percent are printed in the same place — the position carries no concentration information whatsoever. On complexion products the code usually appears inside a bracketed may-contain group, the notation used when one formula is filled into several shades; that bracket is decoded code by code further down.

US labels handle the same substance differently: they declare it by name as Titanium Dioxide and do not use the Colour Index form at all, which is why searching a US ingredient list for CI 77891 normally returns nothing. The listing that stands behind that name is set out in the US cosmetic listing below.

One label element does carry physical information, and it is the only one that does. Where the pigment is present as a nanomaterial, EU labeling rules require the ingredient name to be followed by the word "nano" in brackets — the declaration then reads Titanium Dioxide (nano) rather than CI 77891. Two readings follow. The suffix appears with the INCI word form, so a bracketed nano designation and a bare CI number are not interchangeable ways of writing the same thing. And the absence of the suffix tells you only that the material is not declared as a nanoform; it says nothing about grade, coating or crystal type.

CI 77891 and E 171 differ as legal systems, not as substances. The Colour Index number comes from the international colorant register described above, to which EU cosmetics law only refers; E 171 is a genuine EU numbering, created by food additive law for the same chemical.

When the EU withdrew E 171 from the list of permitted food additives following the EFSA re-evaluation published on 6 May 2021, the decision addressed ingestion as a food additive. It left the cosmetics instrument untouched, and titanium dioxide with Colour Index number 77891 continues to be authorized as a white cosmetic colorant. A reader who finds the code in a lipstick and recalls headlines about a European ban is merging two instruments: identical substance identity does not produce identical authorization across product sectors.

The purity cross-reference does not bridge that gap either, and this is the point most database entries miss. What Annex IV, entry 143 borrows from Commission Directive 95/45/EC are specifications — identity and purity criteria, the analytical description of an acceptable material. A specification is not an authorization. It states what the pigment must be, not where it may be used. Deleting E 171 from the food additive list therefore removed a food permission and left the borrowed analytical criteria in place, which is precisely why the cosmetics entry kept working unchanged after the food decision.

The United States splits the same substance across two separate listings, one for food and one for cosmetics, described in the next section; both tracks with their current status appear in the full EU and US regulatory picture.

The cosmetic listing is short and permissive. Under 21 CFR 73.2575, titanium dioxide may be safely used in cosmetics, including cosmetics intended for use in the area of the eye, in amounts consistent with good manufacturing practice. Identity and specifications are taken from 21 CFR 73.575(a)(1) and (b), and batches are exempt from certification. There is no numerical percentage ceiling in that provision, and no restriction limiting it to rinse-off or leave-on categories.

The food listing is the separate one. 21 CFR 73.575 permits titanium dioxide as a color additive in food at not more than 1 percent by weight — a ceiling that exists only on the food side and has no counterpart in the cosmetic provision.

A proceeding against that food listing is open and undecided. On 14 April 2023 a color additive petition was filed by the Environmental Defense Fund, the Center for Environmental Health, the Center for Food Safety, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Environmental Working Group, asking the FDA to revoke 21 CFR 73.575; the filing was announced in the Federal Register on 3 May 2023. As of August 2026 the FDA has published no decision, so nothing in US law has changed. The petition addresses food use only, does not concern 21 CFR 73.2575, and therefore has no bearing on CI 77891 on a cosmetic label.

Titanium dioxide has one of the highest refractive indices of any white pigment, which means it scatters visible light very strongly rather than absorbing it. On a label, that single physical property translates into whiteness, opacity and coverage: the pigment hides what lies beneath the film, lifts a formula's brightness, and lightens or mutes any shade it is mixed into.

That is why the code turns up across such different product types — foundation and concealer, pressed and loose powder, eyeshadow, lipstick, toothpaste, whitened soap bases. Its behavior in complexion products is described in more detail in its use in foundation, powder and color cosmetics.

One precision point competing pages miss: in sunscreen the same substance additionally works as a physical UV filter, which is a separate regulatory function from its role as a colorant. That second function has its own EU permission with its own ceiling — titanium dioxide is authorized as a UV filter at a maximum concentration of 25 % in cosmetic products, whereas the colorant entry in Annex IV carries no numerical figure at all. The consequence for label reading is direct: the code in an ingredient list does not by itself indicate any UV protection, and in most color cosmetics the pigment is purely decorative. The filter role is covered under its function as a mineral UV filter.

In cold-process and melt-and-pour soap making the pigment plays a narrower part than it does in color cosmetics. Its purpose is to produce an opaque white base, or to lighten a batch before micas, clays or other pigments are dispersed into it. It cleanses nothing, conditions nothing and takes no part in saponification: the pigment is not consumed in the reaction but stays suspended in the finished bar, which is why a rinse-off product still declares it in the ingredient list even though the bar leaves the skin within seconds.

The handling point concerns makers rather than users. The pigment is supplied as a dry powder, and the exposure route that matters is inhalation rather than skin contact — the reason for that is explained with the concentration limits below; a cured bar releases nothing. The hazard summary sheet of the New Jersey Department of Health rates the raw material HEALTH 2, FLAMMABILITY 0 and REACTIVITY 0, where 2 on that key means moderate and 0 means no rating for that endpoint: a nuisance-dust profile, not a fire or reactivity problem in the workroom. Standard first aid follows the same logic — if airborne powder reaches the eyes, flush them with water for at least 15 minutes, and in the United States Poison Control is reachable at 1-800-222-1222 for exposure advice. Batch practice is covered under titanium dioxide in soap making, including dispersion methods, typical craft dosage ranges and why the pigment can produce glycerin rivers.

The concentration figures come from SCCS Opinion SCCS/1617/20, adopted by written procedure on 6 October 2020, and they only make sense when read together with a product form. For pigmentary, non-nano titanium dioxide the SCCS considers the material safe for use as a colorant in cosmetic products. It further considers it safe up to 25 % in face make-up products and up to 25 % in loose powder products. In sprays the same assessment yields far lower values: a maximum of 1.4 % for general consumers and 1.1 % for professional users such as hairdressers.

One mechanism explains that eighteen-fold gap, and it is the key to almost every alarming story told about this substance. On skin, the pigment sits on the surface of the film; uptake through healthy, intact skin is described in SCCS/1617/20 as negligible. In a spray — and equally in a cloud of raw powder during weighing — the material becomes airborne, and the relevant exposure route changes to inhalation of respirable droplets or particles. The toxicological question for titanium dioxide has always been what poorly soluble dust does after it reaches the lung, not what an opaque pigment does on the stratum corneum.

The workplace figures are set in air concentrations, not in percentages, and they show how differently the two settings are governed. OSHA's permissible exposure limit for titanium dioxide is 15 mg/m³ as an 8-hour average, the ACGIH threshold limit value is 10 mg/m³ over 8 hours, and NIOSH recommends 2.4 mg/m³ as a 10-hour average for fine titanium dioxide and 0.3 mg/m³ as a 10-hour average for the ultrafine material — the tighter value tracking particle size, not chemistry.

Two consequences for label reading follow. A percentage figure for this pigment is meaningless unless the product form is stated alongside it, because the same number can be well within an assessed range for a pressed powder and far above it for an aerosol. And a finished cream, stick or bar does not reproduce the inhalation scenario at all, which is why those air-borne guidance values for the raw powder belong to an entirely different order of magnitude from cosmetic use levels.

Anyone who finds the code on a label and searches for it arrives at this question within two clicks. Two hazard assessments stand behind the pigment, and only one is still legally live. IARC places titanium dioxide in Group 2B, possibly carcinogenic to humans, on the basis of inhalation studies of poorly soluble dust (Monographs Vol. 47 and Vol. 93); the evidence in humans was considered insufficient, and the assessment addresses workplace dust exposure — the route distinguished above — not dermal use of a finished cosmetic. The same concern drove the European review: the SCCS assessed cosmetic safety expressly against a possible classification as Carcinogen Cat. 2 (inhalation) in Annex VI to Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008.

That harmonized CLP entry no longer exists. The EU General Court annulled the Carc. 2, H351 classification on 23 November 2022; the Court of Justice dismissed the appeals of France and the Commission on 1 August 2025 in joined cases C-71/23 P and C-82/23 P; an Official Journal notice of 10 December 2025 formalized the removal, and the labeling statements EUH211 and EUH212 for titanium dioxide ceased to apply. Titanium dioxide currently has no harmonized EU carcinogen classification. One clarification is essential: the courts did not rule that inhaled dust is harmless — they annulled the classification decision because of errors of assessment, and occupational exposure limits are unaffected.

For the reader in front of a shelf this resolves into something narrow. A cosmetic containing the pigment carries no hazard pictogram, no supplemental EUH statement and no warning traceable to that annulled entry, and the colorant remains declarable exactly as before — as CI 77891 on an EU panel. How the underlying studies were weighed is examined in the safety discussion in depth.