Talk:Saccharin

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[edit] Question on its banning/ban withdrawal

"The FDA in the United States considered banning saccharin in 1977, but after a moratorium was placed on the ban to study the safety of saccharin, the ban was withdrawn in 1991. Likewise, in 2000, the United States repealed a law requiring saccharin products to carry health warning labels."

This makes no sense. Was there a ban between 1977-1991, or not. It says the United States CONSIDERED a ban.... and then it jumps to saying the ban was WITHDRAWN. If there was no ban, how could it be withdrawn?

1977-91 FDA recommends banning it, and Congress decided not to explicitly ban it but instead to make it something requiring a health safety warning. The FDA withdrew its proposal in 1991, and Congress withdrew (repealed) the labeling requirement in 2000. --Kaze0010 10:17, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quantifying sweetness

how can one substance be "300 times sweeter" than another??? how can you objectively quantify sweetness?

bodnotbod provided this link in the Talk page for Aspartame: Basic_taste#Sweetness. The Wikipedia page on Sweetness may help, too. --Joe Sewell 30 June 2005 16:10 (UTC)

Well, double trouble, the article on Sweetness says Saccharin is 510 (and not 'about' 300) times sweeter than Sugar....

[edit] Molecular drawing

Could someone who is conversant in chemestry please check the molecular drawing for accuracy? It is based on the previous image of the molecule, but I'm a graphic artist who hasn't studied chem in years...

   Looks good to me.  It matchs what's on chemfinder, and the structure itself makes sense.

[edit] Cyclamate was available?

The article states that saccharin ban was protested because it was the only sweetener at the time but ... cyclamate is known from the 1930s, init? -- Ah yes. Cyclamate was banned too.

[edit] Cancer

In the 'Saccharin and Cancer' section, it says that

"The notorious and influential studies of the kind published in 1977 have been criticized for the ridiculously high dosages of saccharin that were given to the test subject rats; dosages were commonly hundreds of times higher than "normal" ingestion expectations would be for a consumer."

This is, I believe, typical of drug studies, where actually buying 1,000,000 of the animal would be ridiculous, and so, a smaller number (10,000 typically?) is used, with far higher dosages than normal, and real-life population numbers are extrapolated from that. Am I correct here? --Superiority 00:21, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Not quite, while animal studies typically use smaller sample sizes (10,000 is even large, more like 500-1000), they use of a high dosing regimen is purely up to the investigator. Sometimes, though not always, the high dose size is done due to budget constraints on long term studies (being more expensive). This can lead to claims that studies with dosages outside the range of recommended daily intake are flawed. However, just because the doses were high does not mean there is NO danger... Enviropearson (talk) 22:56, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] This article ignores some important studies

See the paragraph "Smoldering Battle Over Saccharin Heats Up" in http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol278/issue5339/s-scope.dtl#top. There is also the webpage http://www.cspinet.org/reports/saccomnt.htm provided in the External Links section. These webpages mention studies that are not properly reported in the article. For example, consider the following paragraph in the article:

"Many studies have since been done on saccharin, with some showing a correlation between saccharin consumption and increased cancer (especially bladder cancer) and others showing no such correlation. The notorious and influential studies of the kind published in 1977 have been criticized for the ridiculously high dosages of saccharin that were given to the test subject rats; dosages were commonly hundreds of times higher than "normal" ingestion expectations would be for a consumer. No study has ever shown health risks in humans at normal doses. Furthermore, the biological mechanism believed to be responsible for the rat cancers has been shown to be inapplicable to humans because of differences in urine composition between rats and humans."

The second sentence suggests that the studies mentioned in the first sentence are ridiculous. The first two sentences are separately accurate, but the overall message is wrong. This is what is called insinuation, and it is against the Neutral Point Of View policy. Moreover, studies done after 1977 explain that the argument in the remainder of the paragraph is flawed (see the webpages that are cited just above). Moreover the sentence "No study has ever shown health risks in humans at normal doses." is not sourced, and should be removed in accordance with the WP:verifiability policy. In fact, the studies that are reported in the above webpages mention that some correlation has been shown between cancer and consumption of saccharin and other chemical sweeteners in the population. It is natural that many epidemiological studies do not consider saccharin alone because most commercial sweeteners mixe different chemicals (e.g. cyclamate and saccharin). Here is a quote:

"Numerous case-control studies have sought to evaluate the relationship between artificial-sweetener consumption (saccharin and cyclamate were generally used together) and the incidence of bladder cancer. Several studies, including some of the largest ones, found significant increases in rates of bladder cancer.
  • National Cancer Institute (3,010 total cases) found relative risks of between 1.6 and 3.0 in several subgroups of Americans, including low-risk white females and heavy-smoking males.
  • Morrison (555 British cases) found an increased risk (RR = 2.3) in British females (but not males or Japanese cases) who consumed more than 10 tablets of sugar substitutes (primarily saccharin) a day."

The study of the National Cancer Institute and the study of Morrision that are mentioned just above are two of many epidemiological studies on artificial sweeteners (see above webpages) --Lumière 03:10, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

While this is an old discussion, and though it appears that this user has long since packed his bags and left, I thought I'd comment here, since I've made changes relevant to this topic. The way the article was worded was a bit disingenuous, and I've clarified it so it says no study has found a causal relationship between saccharin consumption and health risks (and I doubt such a study would ever be done for ethical reasons ). However, to deemphasize the debate is also disingenuous, since there is still debate on this issue in the scientific community (see the IARC link in the text for some reaons why the human studies may not be of any value, or if you can, the article mentioned in the PubMed abstract, for arguements why the rat studes were flawed).Gershwinrb 07:00, 9 June 2006 (UTC)


Saccharin was de-listed from the National Toxicology Program's listing of carcinogenic substances in 2006, 11th Review. http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/index.cfm?objectid=72016262-BDB7-CEBA-FA60E922B18C2540

[edit] Etymology

Can someone check the etymological claim (from Greek X, from Sanskrit) in OED or something? This sounds unlikely : such claims are often made by Hindu nationalists who like to claim that PIE = Sanskrit. 80.168.29.18 08:29, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Who is Mamun "Mono" Shaikh?

On March 21st, someone introduced erroneous information into the Discovery and History section. For example, they changed 'Constantin Fahlberg' to 'Mamun "Mono" Shaikh'.12.64.128.22 15:52, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pronounciation?

Since the name has very odd spelling, shouldn't there be pronounciation information on it? Undeaf 18:23, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Would add it myself but I have no idea of the corect pronunciation ;) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.23.177.30 (talk) 00:19, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

The spelling is not at all odd. I can't do IPA symbols, but the photetic spelling is sac-ka-Rin or sack-a-Rin. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 08:26, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Quotes

In the same article there are two quoted statements from Teddy Roosevelt "Anybody who says saccharin is injurious is an idiot." and "Anyone who thinks saccharin is dangerous is an idiot"

Does anyone know exactly what he said else quote marks should be removed.

That was President Roosevelt, with the exact quote being: anyone who thinks saccharin is injurious to health is an idiot" Enviropearson (talk) 03:16, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I've removed the paragraph which included the uncited version of the quote; it did not mention anything about cancer and just restated the previous section "Saccharin and government regulation". 159.124.170.11 (talk) 17:31, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Removed text

I removed this text:

The notorious and influential studies published in 1977 have been criticized for the very high dosages of saccharin that were given to test subject rats; dosages were commonly hundreds of times higher than "normal" ingestion expectations would be for a consumer.

because of the objections raised here. As said, this is typical in trials. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Superiority (talk • contribs) 21:44, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Saccharine redirect

As of right now, Saccharine redirects to this page, but a footnote on the very first word of the summary indicates that they refer to entirely different things. Should these two words really have the same article? 209.204.189.199 (talk) 20:33, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Government Regulation Section

I added more detail to the history of saccharin regarding Roosevelt and Wiley, with a quote from Wiley and a correction to the quote from Roosevelt. My reference may be off though, I direct to the online article that has the exchange within it (see [[1]]), but it is actually attributed in that article to a book by Wiley and sourced there... what would be the proper source? I think the FDA article is a worthy place to send people, but not sure if it is the proper one, any thoughts?Enviropearson (talk) 03:16, 26 March 2008 (UTC)