Most people scan ingredient labels looking for things they recognize. Flour. Salt. Yeast. Water. What they tend to miss is a small chemical name tucked near the bottom of the list, one that has been quietly showing up in American commercial bread for over a century. It doesn’t change the smell, the taste, or the color of your loaf in any obvious way. That’s precisely what makes it so easy to overlook.
Potassium bromate is an inorganic oxidizing agent used as a flour improver and dough conditioner in commercial baking. When added to flour or dough, it strengthens the gluten network by oxidizing sulfhydryl groups in gluten proteins, producing bread with greater volume, finer crumb structure, and improved elasticity. It works efficiently and cheaply, which is why large-scale baking operations have relied on it for so long. What the bread aisle doesn’t advertise is the international controversy that has followed this ingredient for decades.
A Chemical With a Century-Long History in American Bread
Potassium bromate was first patented for use in baking in 1914 and has been a staple of American commercial bread production for over a century. Its durability in the market is less a story of proven safety and more a story of regulatory inertia.
When the Food Additive Amendments of 1958 were enacted out of concern for the health risks of chemicals in the food supply, new additives were required to be determined as “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS, before going to market. But if food additives like potassium bromate were already on the market, they were not required to be reassessed and simply grandfathered into the GRAS categorization.
In 1941, the FDA approved the use of potassium bromate at 50 parts per million in bromated flour, and in 1952, for its use in bread at a level of 75 ppm based on flour. Limits were based on the expectation that the heat of the oven during baking converts bromate to a harmless bromide. That assumption, as later research would reveal, was not always correct.
What It Actually Does to Your Dough
Many packaged baked goods are made with flour that may contain potassium bromate, an additive linked to cancer. The chemical is added to flour to strengthen dough and allow it to rise higher, benefits that have led many U.S. companies to embrace it.
Potassium bromate is a powerful oxidizing agent that chemically ages flour much faster. It also bleaches dough and helps bread rise in the oven. It is particularly needed in enclosed mixing systems, such as continuous mixing and the Chorleywood process, because dough is not exposed to the air during these types of processing.
Potassium bromate performs similar tasks to other dough improvers: strengthening gluten, improving elasticity and softness, and bleaching the flour. For commercial bakers running high-volume operations, that combination of effects is difficult and sometimes costly to replicate with alternatives.
The Health Concerns That Built Over Decades
In 1999, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) categorized potassium bromate as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” It has been banned as a food additive in Europe since 1990, in Canada since 1994, and in India since 2016.
In lab tests, animals exposed to potassium bromate had increased incidences of both benign and malignant tumors in the thyroid and peritoneum, the membrane lining the abdominal cavity. Later research found that ingesting the additive increased cancer of the animals’ thyroid, kidneys and other organs significantly.
Oxidative stress refers to an imbalance of the production of free radicals and antioxidant defenses in the body. Numerous animal studies show that the consumption of potassium bromate can induce such an imbalance in the body. In a study published in the journal Toxicology in 2006, researchers examined the contribution of oxidative stress in potassium bromate-induced cancers.
The “It Burns Off in the Oven” Argument
The FDA’s regulatory position has been that when used according to good manufacturing practice, potassium bromate is fully converted to potassium bromide, a harmless salt, during the baking process. This assumption underpins the agency’s continued permissiveness.
However, independent laboratory testing has repeatedly demonstrated that residual bromate persists in finished baked goods, particularly when baking times or temperatures are insufficient for complete conversion.
Sometimes, under optimal conditions, bromate is converted to potassium bromide, which is not harmful to ingest, but it cannot be assumed that all bromate is reduced to bromide. Therefore, it is possible that some residue remains in finished baked goods. Consumption of bread with potassium bromate residues is also associated with an increased incidence of cancer and oxidative stress. The “it burns off” argument, in short, holds only under ideal baking conditions that may not always be met.
Banned Across Most of the Developed World
Potassium bromate is banned in bread in the EU, UK, Canada, Brazil, China, Japan, and many other countries. The breadth of that list is striking. These are countries with very different regulatory traditions, yet they reached the same conclusion.
Potassium bromate has been banned as a food additive in Europe since 1990, in Canada since 1994, and in India since 2016. Other countries that have banned potassium bromate include Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, Peru, China, and Sri Lanka.
Several organizations took steps to limit its usage or remove it from the list of approved dough conditioners, including the UN’s Joint Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization. It was also banned by the EU and eventually by a myriad of other countries. The U.S. remains a notable outlier in this global consensus.
Still Legal Across Most of the United States in 2026
Potassium bromate remains permitted in U.S. baked goods under 21 CFR 136 while banned in the EU, Canada, China, India, Brazil, and most major economies.
Potassium bromate is used almost exclusively in baked goods as a flour treatment agent. It appears as an ingredient in more than 200 products currently on the U.S. market. The Environmental Working Group has identified specific products including Gomez flour tortillas and Hanover baked sourdough soft pretzels, among others.
The current FDA process allows the food industry to regulate itself when it comes to thousands of added ingredients, by determining for itself which ingredients should be considered “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS, and deciding on their own whether or not to disclose the ingredients’ use and the underlying safety data to the FDA. This self-regulation model is what allowed potassium bromate to remain on shelves long after global scientific alarm bells were raised.
The FDA Finally Opens a Review in 2024
The FDA initiated a formal review of potassium bromate on March 4, 2024, placing it on the agency’s List of Select Chemicals in the Food Supply Under FDA Review. That same list also included other disputed additives like propylparaben and mycotoxins.
The FDA initiated a formal review of potassium bromate on March 4, 2024, placing it on the agency’s List of Select Chemicals in the Food Supply Under FDA Review. As of March 2026, the review remains in the “Review of Information” phase. The comment period has closed.
Rather than pursuing regulatory prohibition, the FDA has historically taken a collaborative approach, working with the American Bakers Association to encourage industry to improve baking technology and testing so that bromate is used in ways that minimize residual levels. This voluntary, industry-led strategy stands in sharp contrast to the outright bans adopted by virtually every other major regulatory authority worldwide.
California Leads the Way Among U.S. States
In October 2023, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law banning the use of potassium bromate, along with three other common food additives, including brominated vegetable oil, propylparaben, and red dye No. 3. The California Food Safety Act takes effect in 2027, when it will be outlawed to sell, distribute and manufacture the additives in the state.
It is the first time that a U.S. state has prohibited food additives that are deemed safe by the Food and Drug Administration. That’s a remarkable sentence worth sitting with for a moment.
California’s ban of potassium bromate, propylparaben, red dye 3, and the additive brominated vegetable oil has forced many companies to start reformulating their foods, because it’s difficult to manufacture different foods for California than the rest of the country. In practice, California’s market size tends to push national reformulation even when other states haven’t mandated it.
A Growing Patchwork of State Bans
Following the success of California’s law, 18 other states have introduced bills to regulate or ban potassium bromate, which are currently working their way through state legislatures.
In the medium term, New York, Illinois, Arkansas, and Maryland are advancing statewide bans. If enacted, the patchwork of state laws will further compress the economic case for continued bromate use. School food bans in Utah and Arizona signal bipartisan concern.
In September 2024, Rep. Rose DeLauro from Connecticut introduced a bill, the Toxic Free Food Act, that would alter the GRAS process and require companies to submit more evidence that a food is safe before being used in products. Whether that bill advances remains uncertain, but its introduction reflects a notable shift in the political temperature around food additive oversight.
The MAHA Commission and Federal Momentum
On February 13, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14212, establishing the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission. The Commission’s assessment, titled “Make Our Children Healthy Again,” highlighted children’s exposure to environmental chemicals and ultra-processed foods as drivers of chronic disease. The MAHA initiative has created political momentum across party lines for food chemical reform.
The FDA’s existing review of potassium bromate, initiated in March 2024, now sits within a broader federal push to reassess legacy food additives, though no concrete enforcement timeline for bromate has emerged.
Companies still using potassium bromate should be reformulating now. The California deadline is ten months away, multiple other states are close behind, and the substance has been banned in virtually every other major market. The question is not whether bromate will be removed from the U.S. food supply, but whether individual companies act proactively or are forced to scramble under deadline pressure.
What Consumers Can Do Right Now
Potassium bromate appears on ingredient labels as “potassium bromate” or as part of “bromated flour.” Checking for either of those terms on a bread label is a straightforward first step, though it requires actually turning the package over and reading the fine print, which most shoppers never do.
The FDA classifies both azodicarbonamide and potassium bromate as GRAS, allowing companies to rely on them for speed, consistency, and low cost. However, the use of these chemicals in American bread may be waning as states like California, Utah, Texas, and New York have banned or proposed bans on these additives, with several other states following suit.
While we await the passage of more state legislation or new federal action, consumers can minimize exposure to potassium bromate by checking food labels and avoiding products that use it. Organic bread products, by their standards, must meet requirements that protect consumers from exposure to additives like these, making them a reliable alternative for those who want to avoid the ingredient entirely.
Conclusion: The Ingredient That Shouldn’t Still Be a Question
The global picture here is consistent. Europe banned potassium bromate in 1990. Canada followed in 1994. Brazil, China, Japan, India, and a dozen other countries all came to the same conclusion: the risk wasn’t worth the baking convenience. The U.S. is still deliberating.
That deliberation isn’t purely scientific. It’s structural. When it comes to additives already in our food and the safety of certain ingredients, FDA has taken a hands-off approach. The current FDA process allows the food industry to regulate itself when it comes to thousands of added ingredients, by determining for itself which ingredients should be considered “generally recognized as safe.”
The reasonable takeaway for most people isn’t panic. It’s awareness. The bread on American shelves is not the same as bread sold under comparable labels in Europe, and the difference isn’t just in the grain or the recipe. It’s in what’s been added, and what hasn’t yet been taken out. That’s worth knowing the next time you reach for a loaf without reading the label.
