Saccharin is in a lot of products you might use everyday. It's in items like sugar-free gum, diet soda and mouthwash. It's even in some of your pills. But now there's one less place where you can find the popular artificial sweetener. The Environmental Protection Agency is taking saccharin and its salts off its list of hazardous substances. According to the agency, the crystalline powder "is no longer considered a potential hazard to human health."

Saccharin was first listed as a hazardous waste in 1980 after studies in rats showed the sweetener caused higher rates of bladder cancer. The EPA subsequently determined it to be a "potential human carcinogen". Yet two decades later, the National Toxicology Program and International Agency for Research on Cancer reversed that classification after scientists failed to link saccharin consumption to cancer in humans.

Saccharin was removed from their listings of hazardous substances. The EPA has now followed suit, after a petition was filed earlier this year by the Calorie Control Council, an advocacy association that claims to represent the low-calorie food and beverage industry.

According to the EPA, saccharin is three hundred times sweeter than sugar. Today's decision is not expected to impact consumers. Indeed, the EPA says the only anticipated change will be in how waste from saccharin and its salts are managed, now that they are not considered to be hazardous.

The EPA's full list of hazardous substances is available online.