Saccharin was produced first in 1879, by
Constantin Fahlberg, a chemist working on
coal tar derivatives in
Ira Remsen's laboratory at
Johns Hopkins University. Fahlberg noticed a
sweet taste on his hand one evening, and connected this with the compound benzoic sulfimide on which he had been working that day. Fahlberg and Remsen published articles on benzoic sulfimide in 1879 and 1880. In 1884, then working on his own in
New York City, Fahlberg applied for patents in several countries (including German patents 35211 and 113720), describing methods of producing this substance that he named saccharin. Two years later, he began production of the substance in a factory in a suburb of
Magdeburg in Germany. Fahlberg would soon grow wealthy, while Remsen merely grew irritated, believing he deserved credit for substances produced in his laboratory. On the matter, Remsen commented, "Fahlberg is a scoundrel. It nauseates me to hear my name mentioned in the same breath with him." Although saccharin was commercialized not long after its discovery, until sugar shortages during
World War I, its use had not become widespread. Its popularity further increased during the 1960s and 1970s among dieters, since saccharin is a
calorie-free sweetener. In the United States, saccharin is often found in restaurants in
pink packets; the most popular brand being "
Sweet'n Low". Due to the difficulty of importing sugar from the
West Indies during
World War I, the
British Saccharin Company was founded in 1917 to produce saccharin at its Paragon Works near
Accrington,
Lancashire. Production was licensed and controlled by the
Board of Trade in London. Production continued on the site until 1926.
Government regulation Starting in 1907, the
United States Food and Drug Administration began investigating saccharin as a result of the
Pure Food and Drug Act.
Harvey Wiley, then the director of the bureau of chemistry for the FDA, viewed it as an illegal substitution of a valuable ingredient, sugar, by a less valuable ingredient. In a clash that had career consequences, Wiley told President
Theodore Roosevelt, "Everyone who ate that sweet corn was deceived. He thought he was eating sugar, when in point of fact he was eating a coal tar product totally devoid of food value and extremely injurious to health." But Roosevelt himself was a consumer of saccharin, and, in a heated exchange, Roosevelt angrily answered Wiley by stating, "Anybody who says saccharin is injurious to health is an idiot." The episode proved the undoing of Wiley's career. In 1911, Food Inspection Decision 135 stated that foods containing saccharin were
adulterated. However, in 1912, Food Inspection Decision 142 stated that saccharin was not harmful. More controversy was stirred in 1969 with the discovery of files from the FDA's investigations of 1948 and 1949. These investigations, which had originally argued against saccharin use, were shown to prove little about saccharin being harmful to human health. In 1977, the FDA made an attempt to completely ban the substance, The current status of saccharin is that it is allowed in most countries, and countries such as Canada have lifted their previous ban of it as a food additive. The claims that it is associated with bladder cancer were shown to be unfounded in experiments on primates. (It is, however, prohibited to mail saccharin tablets or packets to France.) Saccharin was formerly on California's list of chemicals known to the state to cause cancer for the purposes of
Proposition 65, but it was delisted on April 6, 2001.
Warning label addition and removal In 1958, the United States Congress amended the
Food, Drugs, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 with the
Delaney clause to mandate that the
Food and Drug Administration not approve substances that "induce cancer in man, or, after tests, [are] found to induce cancer in animals." Studies in laboratory rats during the early 1970s linked saccharin with the development of bladder cancer in rodents. As a consequence, all food containing saccharin was labeled with a warning meeting the requirement of the
Saccharin Study and Labeling Act of 1977. However, in 2000, the warning labels were removed because scientists learned that rodents, unlike humans, have a unique combination of high pH, high
calcium phosphate, and high protein levels in their urine. One or more of the proteins that are more prevalent in male rats combine with calcium phosphate and saccharin to produce microcrystals that damage the lining of the bladder. Over time, the rat's bladder responds to this damage by overproducing cells to repair the damage, which leads to tumor formation. Since this does not occur in humans, there is no elevated risk of bladder cancer. The delisting of saccharin led to legislation repealing the warning label requirement for products containing saccharin. In 2001, both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the state of
California reversed their positions on saccharin, declaring it safe for consumption. The FDA's decision followed a 2000 determination by the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services'
National Toxicology Program to remove saccharin from its list of carcinogens. The
Environmental Protection Agency has officially removed saccharin and its salts from their list of hazardous constituents and commercial chemical products. In a release in December 2010, the EPA stated that saccharin is no longer considered a potential hazard to human health. ==Chemistry==