Many sunscreens inferior
With Memorial Day around the corner, sunscreens on the market today may be providing inferior sun protection or contain potentially harmful chemicals, an environmental advocacy organization says.
In a review of more than 1,300 products with SPF in them, the Environmental Working Group found that about two-thirds did not meet its standard for protection or chemical safety.
“It’s quite concerning to us,” said Nneka Leiba, EWG’s director of healthy living science, whose group releases an annual guide on sunscreens.
That doesn’t mean, however, that consumers should stop using sunscreen, which provides essential protection against harmful ultraviolet radiation to help prevent skin cancer, EWG and dermatologists say.
The 2019 guide comes after the Food and Drug Administration said earlier this year that 12 of 16 active ingredients in sunscreens have insufficient data from testing to determine whether they can be generally recognized as safe and effective.
Before summer starts, here’s what to know about the EWG guide, sunscreens and sun safety:
Which sunscreens are ‘safe’?
The EWG releases an annual list of sunscreens it says are safe after reviewing a variety of products available to consumers. To rank each product, EWG looks at various factors related to sun protection and the potential health hazard of a product.
Leiba says manufacturers retool their formulas each year, making it necessary to continually review the sunscreens.
EWG named hundreds of SPF products for 2019, and consumers can use the group’s report and lists to check products they commonly use.
“We’ve seen so many more products being made that meet our standards,” Leiba said. “We have brands on there that we know you can get at a corner store.”
However, this year’s review comes amid increased attention on sunscreen ingredient safety from the FDA.
In February, the regulatory agency announced a new proposed rule that would require more testing be done on sunscreen active ingredients as well as better broad spectrum protection for products with high SPFs, which often do not have a good balance of protection against UVA and UVB radiation, Leiba said.
FDA study
An FDA study published this month found that some of the ingredients the FDA says need more safety data enter the bloodstream at levels that far exceed its recommended threshold without a government safety inspection.
Of the 16 sunscreen ingredients, only two were recognized by the FDA as proven safe and effective – zinc oxide and titanium dioxide, the two active ingredients in most mineral sunscreens.
Two other ingredients – PABA and trolamine salicylate – were deemed unsafe under the proposed rule.
For the remaining 12, including common active ingredients like oxybenzone and octocrylene found in chemical sunscreens, the FDA called for more testing before saying whether they were safe or unsafe.
Leiba says oxybenzone is a potential endocrine disruptor, meaning it can affect growth, development and reproduction. According to EWG, studies have shown it is a weak estrogen and can lower testosterone in adolescent boys.
Overall sun protection
While sunscreens can help protect against harmful sun damage to skin, they are just one component of overall sun protection, doctors say. People going outside should also wear protective clothing, including long sleeves, hats and sunglasses, as well as seek shade when possible, dermatologists say.
“As common sense as that sounds, it’s hard to implement, Leffell said, stressing that people should not only use one sunscreen. “People need to have different arrows in their quiver and not just rely on a single arrow.”
The AAD recommends a broad-spectrum, water-resistant sunscreen with an SPF of 30 or higher. Too high of an SPF may result in users not getting adequate UVA protection, Leffell and Leiba say.