Brilliant Black BN

Here's a textbook case of why context matters: in lab dishes, Brilliant Black flagged positive in two genotoxicity tests — which sounds alarming. But in actual long-term animal studies it caused no cancer, so EFSA concluded those test-tube signals don't translate into real-world risk and kept the ADI at 5 mg/kg. The practical flag isn't cancer — it's that heavy-consuming children under 10 can tip over that daily limit. Not allowed in US food, and like all these dyes, purely decorative.