Many brands are "unsafe" because they contain sweeteners with dubious credentials, like saccharin & cyclamtes. Others contain substantial amounts of fructose or metabolize as fructose. EQUAL  has always had a bad name for these reasons.

Stevia has been touted as safe because it is "natural" and as far as I can tell, there is not much evidence to refute it being safe.  There's an old saying "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em". That's what Equal has done - produced a stevia based sweetener. I've been using the tablets in coffee for a few days and find it sweeter than Splenda with no after-taste.

The guy that started all this was John Yudkin [ Pure White & Deadly 1972 ]  said that it doesn't really matter which you use since you ingest such small  amounts of the stuff.

JohnN