Natural sunscreens recalled over SPF fail
The makers of a sunscreen that has been pulled from sale after it failed testing are embarrassed and will change their product.
Two natural sunscreens have been recalled, and another will be relabelled to correct a false claim of high SPF, following testing by Consumer NZ.
Snowberry Family+ Sunscreen SPF 30 had an SPF of only 20 and failed requirements for broad spectrum protection.
Snowberry general manager Greg Billington said the results of Consumer NZ’s testing were ‘‘really embarrassing’’.
Billington said the company would change its zinc supplier and get a new formula approved by the United States’ Food and Drug Administration, which he said had the ‘‘most stringent’’ international standard.
‘‘We tested two of our other sunscreens in Australia before we started selling them, and the
Family+ had the same active ingredients as those.
‘‘But it would have cost a fortune to test every ingredient, so we did not catch that our zinc was not up to scratch.’’
He said a single SPF test cost
$10,000. The SPF rating of 20 still protected customers from 93 per cent of UVB and UVA light, and an SPF 30 rating was only 4 per cent more coverage, he said.
The other sunscreen to be recalled, Pure South 100 per cent Natural Sunscreen, said its raspberry oil ingredient contributed an SPF of 28 to 50, but testing found it had an SPF of 5.
Pure South told Consumer NZ chief executive Sue Chetwin it will stop labelling the product a sunscreen and remove reference to the raspberry oil’s SPF.
Pure Blend Sunscreen SPF 15++ was found to only have an SPF of 4. It will be relabelled as a ‘‘lotion containing zinc’’.
Pure Blend owner Kelly Willoughby admitted she had never tested her product, but had believed it was SPF 20 because of the amount of zinc she added to the product.
Willoughby said she found the results ‘‘quite shocking’’.
‘‘Suppliers will give you these charts saying that adding this much zinc gives your product such and such SPF,’’ she said.
‘‘You get different charts from different suppliers, but the information has always been the same ... for years and years.’’
Chetwin said consumer watchdogs around the world had told her they were concerned at the way sunscreens are tested and the lack of upgrades in the formulas.
Willoughby said she was aware of legislation requiring a product to be tested if it was labelled with SPF higher 15, which is why she put it as ‘‘15++’’.
She was told by Consumer NZ of the results and was given two days to supply a test that could clear her product’s name. But Willoughby said sending the product to testing facilities in Australia would have taken too long.
Neither Pure Blend or Snowberry products had been tested on people, and Pure South had only been tested on one person.
‘‘While companies are encouraged to comply with the Aust- ralian New Zealand standard, it’s clear some don’t,’’ Chetwin said.
‘‘Making the standard mandatory would help ensure consumers aren’t misled about the protection a sunscreen provides.’’
Chetwin called New Zealand’s voluntary standards on SPF ‘‘ridiculous’’.
‘‘In a country where melanoma is such a problem, I can’t believe we haven’t caught up with Australia’s mandatory standards on this.’’
Tony Reeder, a University of Otago associate professor of preventive and social medicine, said Australia has declining instances of skin cancer in younger age groups, while in New Zealand the rates have ‘‘no sustained evidence of dropping off’’.
‘‘If recent preventions had worked we would have expected to see a decline.’’
Reeder expected overall rates of melanoma in New Zealand to increase in older populations in the coming years.
He said Snowberry Family+ Sunscreen SPF 30 failing the required broad spectrum protection was especially worrisome.
While SPF relates to a sunscreen’s protection against UVB rays, broad spectrum protection relates to the sun’s UVA rays.
‘‘UVA rays penetrate deeper into the skin and can cause malignant melanoma, which is the deadliest skin cancer in New Zealand.’’