There’s been so much in the news lately about sunscreen, since it is, in fact, summer everywhere and everyone almost can’t help but get a little sun exposure, no matter what their skin tone is. Here it is the Fourth of July so it’s the perfect time to talk about summer sun protection, which we talk about often, but this was actually newsworthy enough to talk about on news sites, so we’re going to talk about it here as well.
There was that news about the new rating system for sunscreens being looked at as a more effective means to rate and grade the levels of UVA and UVB protection, since currently only a certain level of UV protection is FDA supervised and mandated, and now there is news that the American Academny of Dermatology is testing a lot of the more popular name brand sunscreens and saying that they are misleading customers about the level of protection they offer.
They’re saying that they want to first test the actual effectiveness and efficiency of these sunscreens at providing the assigned level of protection, how long it provides protection according to labeling (which would include how often it has to be re-applied), and also if there are harmful chemicals or compounds in the sunscreen that may absorb into the skin and be harmful when applied, especially to children who use the product.
One of the popular ingredients (chemicals) found in sunscreens today is called oxybenzone, and this ingredient has been tested and found in some cases to be a hormone interruptor, as well as a possible carcinogen (cancer causing agent). This would be ironic, because the very thing we are trying to do when we apply sunscreen is protect ourselves against skin cancer, so it would obviously be disappointing if the very thing we put on to protect our skin was actually helping to create carcinogenic conditions in our body and on our skin.
However, other people say that the warnings about oxybenzone are unnecessary frightening and in fact the ingredient was safe. If the FDA says so, it must be, right? I’m being facetious by the way, lots of drugs approved by the FDA later come back to bite us in the butt, we all know that. Critics of those that claim oxybenzone is unsafe say they are more worried about people not using sunscreen for fear of this ingredient.
In the past, another ingredient commonly used in sunscreen called PABA was eliminated from most because of it’s extremely irritating qualities. Lots of people, including myself had extreme reactions to PABA, so it’s not found in many today.
As far as the brands that tested on the low end of the effectiveness scale as discussed earlier, you will recognize all of them, and have probably even used them in the past. They are Neutrogena, Coppertone, and Banana Boat. No other recognizable names were mentioned.
