According to the Daily Mail, a proposed law in California could prohibit the sale of certain candies, including Skittles, Sour Patch Kids, Pez, and jelly beans, due to the additives used in them being linked to cancer, organ damage, and DNA harm.

The ban could also extend to Trident sugar-free gum, Campbell’s soup, and some bread brands.

“Californians shouldn’t have to worry that the food they buy in their neighborhood grocery store might be full of dangerous additives or toxic chemicals,” reads a statement from Assembly Member Jesse Gabriel, whose district is outside of Los Angeles and who proposed the ban in a bill.

The proposed legislation introduced by Gabriel aims to restrict five particular substances, namely propylparaben, red dye 3, brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, and titanium dioxide. It’s worth noting that the last three substances have already been prohibited in the European Union.

The proposed legislation would not only prohibit the sale of candies containing certain additives, but also ban the use of those ingredients in the production of food items across California.

“This bill will correct for a concerning lack of federal oversight and help protect our kids, public health, and the safety of our food supply,” Gabriel added.

“The idea here is for [companies] to change their recipes,” he told the Daily Mail, adding that he speculates a uniform recipe change for the snack sin question rather than Cali-custom batches.

A consumer sued Mars, the maker of Skittles, last year due to the use of titanium dioxide as a color enhancer. Although the suit was dismissed, experts have expressed concerns about the ingredient. In 2015, a research published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature found that titanium dioxide has the potential to accumulate in a person’s bloodstream, liver, spleen, and kidneys.

Red dye 3 has been linked to DNA-damaging genotoxicity in research published in 2012. In 2020, the Environmental Protection Agency reported that children who consumed the dye were more likely to be hyperactive and inattentive.

According to the Daily Mail, brominated vegetable oil was removed from Mountain Dew by its parent company, Pepsi, in 2020. Potassium bromate has been banned in the European Union, Canada, and Brazil due to its links to thyroid and kidney cancers.