Chapter 11: The supporting cast · Part 6: Stabilisers
Sodium formate and calcium formate
No badge
The worst fact: of the company reports to the EU that classify calcium formate, 90.4% say "Causes serious eye damage". This is the companies' own classification, not an official one.
Why brands use it: formate stabilises the protease enzyme in the bottle.
Take care if: it gets in your eyes.
Comes from: sodium formate: carbon monoxide and caustic soda heated under pressure, or as a by-product of making pentaerythritol. Calcium formate: lime with synthesis gas, or a by-product of the same process. No reference says which route is main, so this book gives no 🛢 badge (carbon monoxide: "May damage the unborn child.").
Myth check: "It's formic acid": it's the salt. Formic acid itself is a Schedule 5 poison, but the Poisons Standard excludes its salts.
Contaminants: nil.
Fair to say: 2,698 of 2,778 companies reported sodium formate doesn't meet any hazard criteria, and both are green circles on the US EPA's Safer Choice list.
Correct as of November 2026. What the badges mean
Sources
- Safe Work Australia. Hazardous Chemical Information System (HCIS): classifications for calcium chloride, boric acid, borax, and for N-vinylpyrrolidone, vinyl acetate, ethylene oxide, 1,4-dioxane, hydrazine, aniline, p-toluidine, styrene, chloromethane, carbon monoxide and octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane (D4).
- US EPA. Denial of TSCA petition on polyvinyl alcohol, 88 FR (21 April 2023); Safer Choice Ingredient List.
- HSDB (US National Library of Medicine), via PubChem: manufacturing, use and impurity data.
- ECHA C&L Inventory (aggregated company notifications, via PubChem).
The full source list is at the end of Chapter 11.