Best Sunscreens & Toxic Ones to Avoid
It’s no secret that the sun (in moderate doses) provides all sorts of health benefits, including helping our bodies manufacture vital vitamin D. With warmer weather right around the corner, though, many people are looking for the best sunscreens to cut their risk of sun overexposure, sunburns and possibly skin cancer
Environmental Working Group’s 15th annual Guide to
Sunscreens is a mix of good and bad news when it comes to the state of
sunscreens sold in American and beyond. For instance, oxybenzone — a suspected
hormone-disrupting chemical that is readily absorbed into the body — is now
present in 40 percent of the 1,800
products EWG investigated. While that may seem high, consider this: two years
ago, about 60 percent of sunscreens contained this concerning chemical.
In December, the National Toxicology Program released
findings linking oxybenzone exposure to a higher risk of thyroid tumors in
female rats. And at the end of March, the European Commission, which reviews
ingredient safety in Europe, published a final opinion finding oxybenzone
unsafe for use at current levels.
“Yet again, the sunscreen market is flooded with products
that use potentially harmful ingredients and provide poor UVA protection,” said
Leiba. “EWG’s guide is one of the only tools available to help consumers find
products that provide adequate protection and are made without ingredients that
may pose health concerns.
“U.S. sunscreens will not sufficiently improve until the Food and Drug Administration sets stronger regulations, restricts the use of harmful chemicals and approves new active ingredients that offer stronger UVA and UVB protection without concern of causing harm,” says Nneka Leiba, EWG vice president of Health Living Science.
Sunscreen Chemicals Build Up in Your Blood
The effects of sunscreen may linger longer than expected,
too. An FDA-led 2020 study found that “chemical sunscreen ingredients are
systemically absorbed after one application, and some ingredients can stay in
the blood for at least three weeks.”
The sunscreen chemicals tested include avobenzone,
oxybenzone, octocrylene, homosalate, octisalate and octinoxate, and all six
active ingredients tested readily absorbed into the bloodstream of humans in
the study — and at concentrations that surpass an important FDA safety
threshold.
This builds on previous research showing that sunscreen
chemicals hit the bloodstream within a day of using them — and at levels high
enough to prompt a government investigation on safety.
“We slather these ingredients on our skin, but these
chemicals haven’t been adequately tested,” Leiba says. “This is just one
example of the backward nature of product regulation in the U.S.”
Beyond safety issues is another question: Does sunscreen
even work? Environmental Working Group’s found that nearly 75 percent of
sunscreens don’t work and/or contain concerning ingredients that are readily
absorbed by the body.
Things may be slowing moving in the right direction, but for now, the onus is still on the consumer to find sunscreen that’s safer and actually works.