Food & Drink / Compounds / Cadmium sulfide

Cadmium sulfide in food: ingestion safety

Moderate risk

Harmful if swallowed. Cadmium sulfide classified H302.

What is cadmium sulfide?

The IUPAC name is sulfanylidenecadmium.

Also known as: sulfanylidenecadmium, Cadmium sulphide, Cadmium Yellow, Greenockite.

IUPAC name
sulfanylidenecadmium
CAS number
1306-23-6
Molecular formula
CdS
Molecular weight
144.48 g/mol
SMILES
S=[Cd]
PubChem CID
14783

Risk for people

Moderate risk

Harmful if swallowed. Cadmium sulfide classified H302.

Regulatory consensus

2 regulatory and scientific bodies have classified Cadmium sulfide. The classifications differ — that's the data.

AgencyYearClassificationNotes
EPA CTX / Genetox—Genotoxicity: positive (Ames: None, 2 positive / 0 negative reports)
EPA CTX / Genetox—Genotoxicity: positive (Ames: None, 2 positive / 0 negative reports)

Regulators apply different standards of evidence — animal-data weighting, exposure-pattern assumptions, epidemiological power thresholds — which is why two scientific bodies can review the same data and reach different conclusions. The disagreement is the data.

Where you encounter cadmium sulfide

  • Contaminated Water — Mining site runoff, Industrial discharge areas, Drinking water from old infrastructure
  • Soil Contamination — Industrial sites, Smelter areas, Battery recycling facilities
  • Food Chain — Fish from contaminated waters, Shellfish from polluted areas, Crops grown in contaminated soil

Safer alternatives

Lower-risk approaches that achieve a similar outcome to Cadmium sulfide:

  • Mineral-based or plant-derived pigments
    Trade-offs: Narrower color range. May fade faster than synthetic pigments.
    Relative cost: 1.2-2×

Frequently asked questions

Is cadmium sulfide safe for you?

Harmful if swallowed. Cadmium sulfide classified H302.

What products contain cadmium sulfide?

Cadmium sulfide appears in: Mining site runoff (Contaminated water); Industrial discharge areas (Contaminated water); Industrial sites (Soil contamination); Smelter areas (Soil contamination); Fish from contaminated waters (Food chain).

See Cadmium sulfide in the food app

Look up products containing cadmium sulfide, compare to alternatives, and explore the full data record.

Open in food View raw API data

Sources (4)
  1. IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risk to Humans — Cadmium and Cadmium Compounds (1993) — regulatory
  2. Occupational Cadmium Exposure and Lung Cancer Risk in Artists and Industrial Workers (2015) — journal
  3. ASTM D4236 — Standard Practice for Labeling Art Materials for Chronic Health Hazards (2023) — regulatory
  4. EU Cadmium Directive 2006/121/EC — Exemption for Art Materials (2006) — regulatory

Reference data, not professional advice. Aggregates publicly available regulatory and scientific data; not a substitute for veterinary, medical, legal, or regulatory advice. Why we built ALETHEIA →