Sunscreen Ratings That Scare People Every Year Are Bullshit

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When we go out in the sun, we just need sunscreen that will protect our skin, not kill us. That’s not much to ask, is it? But the Environmental Working Group (ERG) wants to pick the best sunscreen, and is nagging us with the true, but not very helpful, facts: This one contains an ingredient that causes cancer in mice once. This one is labeled SPF 100, but probably only SPF 85. Leave me alone, EWG, okay?

In truth, any sunscreen is better than no sunscreen, and the difference between different brands isn’t nearly as big as the EWG wants you to think. Yes, your sunscreen works. No, it won’t kill you.

The EWG has a financial interest in confusing and confusing you

There is a clever mind control trick behind the simple listing of foods as “best” and “worst”. It makes you think that there are products in this category – in this case sunscreens – that you should buy and others that you should avoid. The EWG has been playing this food game for a long time where everything is really okay . Remember their list of The Dirty Dozen producers? Usually, none of the fruits or vegetables contain significant amounts of pesticides, but they still publish the list every year, and we pretend that it means something.

You see, they have no way of dealing with a situation where all the food is okay or when all the food is terrible for you. Regardless of the actual situation, they make a list to buy and a list to avoid. And this distorts the truth.

The EWG benefits directly from this. They say the world is so confusing and only the EWG can help you . Are you already starting to feel that you are being manipulated? Yes, and I haven’t even checked which list my sunscreen falls on yet.

All this leads to the fact that the money goes straight into the pockets of the EWG. If you don’t want to take their buying guide to the store – that sounds kind of difficult as there are so many options – you can buy them directly from the EWG website and the EWG will get a discount.

The EWG also allows companies to pay to get the “EWG Verified” stamp on their products. This is a clear conflict of interest, even though the EWG vows that it will not provide preferential terms to companies that pay (and could even downgrade their ratings if the company’s app discloses ingredients that the EWG was not aware of). There is no word on how much printing costs, but companies must pay a non-refundable $ 500 fee just to apply.

These financial deals may not affect which products come out on top in the rankings, but they definitely give the EWG reason to keep creating these lists each year and sending them out to receive shocking , misleading headlines .

EWG’s concern is justified but exaggerated

The EWG doesn’t actually test sunscreens. Instead, they analyze sunscreens based on their labels. First, they ask if each sunscreen contains any “worrying” ingredients. And second, they calculate how effective the sunscreen ingredients should be to protect against the sun.

In terms of ingredients, they ask if each item on the ingredient list is a “known or suspected chemical hazard.” Obviously, if any of these ingredients were known to be seriously harmful to humans, they would not be on the shelves. So we’re dealing with shades of subtlety: is this ingredient probably the right thing? Or just like everything will be okay? And frankly, some of them may prove harmful when future research is done.

I asked Christine Omberg of the American Chemical Society, a chemist who has done research on light-absorbing chemicals, what she thinks of this approach. “As a chemist, I really love what the EWG have done,” she says, because they collect information on a multitude of potential safety issues in one place. But she stresses that she would not buy sunscreen based on these results.

For example, her Blue Lizard sunscreen contains small amounts of dimethicone, which the EWG believes is associated with organ toxicity. But “here you have to consider the relative risk,” says Omberg. The cancer-preventing benefits of sunscreen far outweigh the dubious risks of rubbing small amounts of dimethicone into the skin.

I looked at what the EWG has to say about dimethicone . In support of their claim that this ingredient is toxic to your organs, they point to it being listed on the Environment Canada Household Substances List . This entry mentions that it is toxic to aquatic organisms, but not hazardous to humans.

The EWG maintains a huge database of similar issues. Dr. Omberg called this “an almost overwhelming body of information, some of which is well corroborated and some not so well corroborated.” Dermatologist Jackie Dosal breaks down two of the EWG’s biggest concerns , retinyl palmitate (a form of vitamin A) and oxybenzone, a chemical that blocks sunlight.

Oxybenzone is harmful to rats who eat (yes, eat) large amounts of it. Short-term tests in humans have shown no side effects. And retinyl palmitate, which the EWG fears may cause cancer in the presence of sunlight, may cause cancer in mice, but “there is no convincing evidence” that it is carcinogenic to very different human skin.

The only EWG warning that I draw attention to is a warning against using aerosol cans where you or children can inhale them. This can be unsafe and, again, we have no evidence to say for sure. The FDA is currently investigating the situation .

There may well be something in the EWG database that could actually be harmful to humans. But now it is almost impossible to say, because the data is simply not there. Unfortunately, there is no good way to play the safer than sorry game because your sunscreen has to contain something . This is a problem the EWG is trying to solve by ranking the “best” sunscreens, but their baseline data is simply not complete enough to say that their selection is better than the alternatives.

Sunscreens on the market work great and won’t kill you

Take this from the Skin Cancer Foundation: sunscreen reduces the risk of skin cancer , no matter what the EWG says. Sunscreen does two things: it blocks the UVB rays that cause burns and sunburn, and it blocks the UVA rays that cause the skin to thicken and wrinkle with age. UVA rays increase your risk of skin cancer, so it’s important that your sunscreen is broad-spectrum, which means it protects you from both.

To determine if sunscreens are effective, EWG analysts inject UV-protective ingredients into a mathematical model to predict how well a sunscreen should protect you. For example, they take into account how quickly each ingredient degrades in the sun. They figure out what they think the SPF of a product should be and compare it to the SPF on the label. And they calculate how much UVA (non-burning rays that can cause cancer and wrinkles) the sunscreen needs to block. But I have several complaints about this aspect of their ratings.

First of all, the EWG rates sunscreens poorly if they have an SPF of 50 or higher. This is ridiculous. While high SPFs can be misleading – they are only marginally better than lower SPFs (SPF 30 blocks 96.7% of UVB rays and SPF 100 blocks 98%) – that doesn’t mean that higher SPF sunscreen is bad! (This, however, means that you shouldn’t pay more for 100 than for 50. Both will be effective.)

Second, the EWG’s analysis is completely theoretical: they never apply sunscreen to anyone’s skin or test it in the laboratory. However Consumer Reports gives and they give very different ratings than the EWG.

Both the EWG and Consumer Reports are trying to quantify the UVA protection of sunscreen. All sunscreens in the US must either be “broad spectrum,” which means they protect against at least a small amount of UVA, or have a warning label explaining that they are not. But this broad spectrum label is a pass / fail criterion: it is impossible to know how much UVA a given sunscreen is blocking. This is where the EWG can step in and give us guidance on choosing a sunscreen that is likely to protect well against UVA. Their results, however, are confusing (they focus on the balance between UVA and UVB protection, not the amount of protection) and do not seem to be consistent with Consumer Reports lab testing. They also include UVA protection in the overall rating of each sunscreen, rather than letting you sort or search by UVA alone.

Things to think about when buying sunscreen

First, don’t rely on sunscreen alone. Stay in the shade and wear hats and clothing; There is no perfect sunscreen and they all wear off, rinse off or rub off over time.

When choosing sunscreen, choose something with a high SPF. Anything between 30 and above would be fine, but there isn’t much difference between SPF 30 and SPF 100. Definitely not pay extra for more.

Find something labeled “broad spectrum”. Omberg says her rule of thumb is to buy something with zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, as they reflect both UVA and UVB rays. Other active ingredients tend to be more specific about what wavelengths they will protect you from.

Do you want to know which sunscreens provide excellent protection against both UVA and UVB? The best source I know is Consumer Reports testing, but the full results are payable. However, they do allow me to name a few brands for you, so I can whisper that all three are great choices:

This range has something for every price range. Whatever you choose, use it often, but not because it stops working over time – some work and some don’t. The real reason is to replace what has rubbed on your clothes or washed away when you go swimming or running in a sweat. Waterproof sunscreens may wear out a little more than others, but they are not magic.

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