Butylated Hydroxytoluene is a human-made chemical used as a preservative in foods and cosmetics. This chemical is regularly used to preserve fats, color, texture, and oils in these products. It's also a synthetic antioxidant used in processed foods. Butylated Hydroxytoluene risks include potential hormone disruption and cancer. 

Butylated Hydroxytoluene has a low molecular weight, and is a non-staining hindered-phenol antioxidant. Hindered phenols find a wide variety of applications, including inhibitors of free radical-chain reactions.

Butylated Hydroxytoluene is used as an antioxidant in products such as metalworking fluids, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, rubber, transformer oils, and embalming fluid. In the petroleum industry, where Butylated Hydroxytoluene is known as the fuel additive AO-29, it is used in hydraulic fluids, turbine and gear oils, and jet fuels. Butylated Hydroxytoluene is also used to prevent peroxide formation in organic ethers and other solvents and laboratory chemicals. It is added to certain monomers as a polymerisation inhibitor to facilitate their safe storage. Some additive products contain Butylated Hydroxytoluene as their primary ingredient, while others contain the chemical merely as a component of their formulation, sometimes alongside butylated hydroxyanisole.