Which sunscreen is safe? I get asked this question a lot, therefore this is the first in a series on Sunscreen Safety.
But first – THANK YOU to everyone who has donated to Ironman Texas for Lionfish Central fundraiser! In just less than one week, we’re at 84% of our goal! We are SO grateful! There’s still time to join in! We AND THE OCEANS can’t thank you enough! AND if you donate $100+, you get a FANCY Lionfish Central shirt that is UPF 50! As your’e about to read, this is the SAFEST way to protect yourself from the sun! Help us finish strong by donating here: https://lionfishcentral.org/fundraising/dr-cynthia-clark-ironman-texas/
| “This is such an important read. I appreciate that they stress that sunscreen is the last consideration when protecting yourself and your children from too much sun. Vitamin D3 is essential to our health and well being and being in the sun provides this.” – Dr. Laura Mathews |
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My favorite resource for this is the Environment Working Group (EWG), because they’ve studied this issue for years. It’s interesting to note that American standards are quite different than European standards, and only about 1/3 of our products pass European guidelines. So what’s the problem with high SPF products?
An EWG peer-reviewed study published in Photodermatology Photoimmunology and Photomedicine found that many sunscreens sold in the U.S. provide inadequate UVA protection compared to what the listed SPF indicates.
People trust these high SPF products too much. There are four strikes against SPF values greater than 50+. They include:
Poor balance. A sunscreen’s SPF rating doesn’t have much to do with its ability to block your skin from UVA rays. As SPF increases, the ratio of UVA protection decreases. High SPF products do a better job of slowing sunburn than they do of protecting from UVA-induced damage, like suppressing the immune system, forming harmful free radicals in your skin, and developing melanoma. Due to poor UVA standards, U.S. sunscreens offer far less protection against UVA than UVB rays, and this is worse for products with the highest SPF values.
You’re misusing high SPF products. High SPF products make you feel falsely secure, so you stay in the sun longer and overexpose yourself to both UVA and UVB rays. If you’d been wearing low SPF, you probably would have gone inside. So you wind up with as many UVB-inflicted sunburns as unprotected sunbathers and more damaging UVA radiation.
Sunburn protection is only marginally better. Sunbathers often assume they get twice as much protection from SPF 100 sunscreen as from SPF 50. But the extra protection is negligible. Properly applied SPF 50 sunscreen blocks 98 percent of UVB rays; SPF 100 blocks 99 percent! When used correctly, sunscreen with SPF values between 30 and 50 offers adequate sunburn protection, even for people most sensitive to sunburn.
High SPF products may pose greater health risks. High SPF products require higher concentrations of sun-filtering chemicals than low SPF sunscreens do. Some of these ingredients may pose health risks when they penetrate the skin and have been linked to tissue damage and potential hormone disruption. Some may trigger allergic skin reactions. If studies showed that high SPF products were better at reducing skin damage and skin cancer risk, the extra chemical exposure might be justified. But they don’t, so choosing sunscreens with lower concentrations of active ingredients – SPF 30 instead of SPF 70, for example – is the smart thing to do.
Safe Fun in the Sun
In my next article on sunscreen, we’ll talk about which nutrients can help you prevent sun damage!
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