You’re wearing it, eating it and using it on your skin every day. The Titanium white pigment was patented in 1909 by two Norwegian scientists and has since then replaced lead white and found itself in every “white” colored part of the human world.
The purest of white
White coloring has been sought after for thousands of years, but often the materials used to make it could be highly toxic: We’ve all heard of the popular use of lead and vinegar to create white pigment. White was seen as a pure color which was hard to create and obtain, so only the wealthy could decorate themselves in white — such traditions of using lead in white makeup goes back to Ancient Egypt, Japan and China. Queen Elizabeth the 1st and upper-class women and men powdered their skin white too, covering smallpox scars while slowly poisoning themselves to death. Paintings and Roman sculptures were painted lead white, as well as houses into the late 19th century. With the development in science, titanium white got an industrial breakthrough thanks to two Norwegian scientists, and replaced lead white which was deemed too toxic, and zinc white which was not covering surfaces well enough.
The Titanium mines
Titanium white pigment is made from Titanium dioxide, which is insoluble in water appears in nature as minerals. Both Farup and Jebsen opened a mine in the Jøssing Fjord where Titanium stone is found in large quantities as imenite minerals, under the company name Titania A/S or Titan Co. A/S. The company worked together with the American National Lead Company from 1920, which had taken a big interest in Titanium white. National Lead Company later took over the ownership of Titania A/S in 1927, and the mine runs to this day transporting out imenite and magnite concentrate.
Protests from nature conservation organizations started in the 1980’s, as the mining company used the fjords as deposits from the mine for decades without stopping. Local fishermen saw that the chemicals and other components from the deposits spread from the fjords and into the sea, not to mention filling up the fjord from it’s original 70 meters depth to 20 meters. Environmental activists from Bellona, Greenpeace and Natur & Ungdom (Nature and Youth) forced through a change, which became a land deposit that was built in the 1990’s and still used today. The pollution from the previous mine dumps in the fjords are still a problem however, and tourists attractions and hiking routes in the nearby area are affected by the mine activity and polluted rivers.
Titanium white soon became affordable and fueled the dream of the purest white pigment for everyone. Old farms and fishermen villages in Norway still have the bright, white painted wooden houses, which became synonymous with a middle class home. Titanium white is used in cosmetics as a pigment or thickener, and especially in sunscreen combined with ultrafine zinc oxide, as it minimizes sunburns and hinders aging associated with a lot of sun exposure. Titanium white is even in your toothpaste, plastic, medicine, in tattoo ink and in food under the name E171. In 2022 EU and Norway banned Titanium dioxide in foods, as it’s no longer considered safe, and the long-term effects of titanium dioxide in the human body is unknown.
So it seems that while the world moved away from the toxic lead white, humans could not let go of looking for the “perfect white” and we ended up with Titanium white. Who knows what will be next?
Sources taken from the research project “How Norway Made the World Whiter”
http://gruve.info/a4.htm and wikipedia on titanium dioxide.
