Thanks, I suspected concerns similar to those. I think it's great Flavorah is being responsive to consumer concerns, but. . ..

It's not lipids themselves that cause "lipid pneumonia," but lipid membrane sacs containing, for example, essential oils in the structure of a plant. Some food flavorings are made by cold pressing "essential oils" from plant material, where the process is gentle enough to allow the lipid sacs to maintain their form, while another process such as distillation might produce a pure essential oil free from lipid sacs.

Lipid membrane sacs can be large enough to present a risk of obstructing alveoli in the lungs, and their chemical structure makes it difficult for the body to remove, resulting in lipid pneumonia. The individual lipids themselves that make up the sacs are tiny molecules, and very unlikely to obstruct anything, as they can easily be absorbed by individual cells.

By way of analogy, an ounce of water inhaled over time as fog (dispersed, individual molecules,) or on the skin as rain (concentrated, individual molecules,)is nothing to be concerned about, but as a hailstone (concentrated, structured molecules,) to the noggin, it's a heck of a wake-up call.

This bit on essential oils and lipids used to be in the sidebar at the height of the scare. Not directly related, but perhaps of interest.

Your wiki link, by the way, is for the acid component of capric triglyceride. The molecule itself is three glycerol (VG) molecules with one caprylic acid molecule.

Capric triglyceride may well be insta-cancer death (although the MSDS/MSDS I'm looking at neglect to mention anything other than irritation with the pure chemical,) but from what I'm reading, it's unlikely to be a lipid pneumonia risk. It does appear you need to report spills in excess of 10,000 lbs.

Just a heads up to anyone reading this, 'cause it confused me at first.

Capric triglyceride is not triacetin. The second part of that quote, the bit about triacetin, is referencing something else.