BHT (Butylated Hydroxytoluene)

Butylated hydroxytoluene is a synthetic antioxidant that keeps the oils and fats in food and cosmetics from going rancid. On this one the regulators split. The European Food Safety Authority set an acceptable daily intake and judges it fine at the levels food allows, and a 2022 toxicogenomics assessment did not confirm that it acts as an endocrine disruptor. France's food and health agency, ANSES, read the science the other way and proposed it as an endocrine disruptor, and the EU added it to a watchlist for that reason. Two findings weigh against it. It is fat-soluble and accumulates: it now turns up in most people's blood, fatty tissue, and breast milk, and throughout surface water and the fish living in it. And its animal evidence points at reproduction, with lowered uterine weight and fewer implantation sites in pregnant mice, while a German government biomonitoring program lists reproductive effects among its most sensitive endpoints. Harm to people at everyday intake is not established, and the animal effects appear at doses above normal exposure. The concern is the pattern rather than any single proven harm: a compound that accumulates in people and wildlife, shows endocrine activity a national regulator treats as disqualifying, and carries reproductive signals in animals.