Net Zero by 2050: Here’s how we make it

“The need for sunscreen is important as it protects you from skin cancer. When you go to the store, chances are the sunscreens you want to buy are spray formulations, since it eliminates the need to mess with thick creams and spreading lotion on your skin. Consumers want formulations with favorable and comfortable “fit and feel,” where they put it on and forget about it while continuing to be protected – essentially, formulations that are easy to wear and are easy to apply. However, the reason why spray sunscreens work so well is that they contain synthetic chemicals that function as UV filters that absorb into your skin.

Unlike other countries, in the U.S., sunscreens are considered drugs and are regulated by the FDA. Many of these synthetic chemical UV filters have been on the FDA sunscreen monograph (a.k.a., a list of approved active ingredients that the FDA has approved) for quite some time. However, recently, these ingredients have come under scrutiny as results from new studies on skin absorption levels and environmental impact have been published. One of the inherent issues is that these chemicals don’t just stay on the skin surface where they protect against UV, but get absorbed through the skin and into your body. They can stay in your blood for weeks after application at potentially unsafe levels and have been detected in urine and breastmilk.

Researchers started looking into this a few years ago when trying to discover the reason why coral bleaching was occurring — particularly in Hawaii and in the country of Palau. Coral bleaching is a big problem because healthy coral reefs are one of the most valuable ecosystems on the planet—both environmentally and economically. As researchers began to understand more about how these chemicals function, they realized how much they were affecting marine life. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warns against using several of the most popular chemical UV filters, such as oxybenzone, octinoxate, and octocrylene. These chemicals can induce defects in mussels, damage coral DNA, deform and kill young coral, decrease fertility and reproduction in fish, cause female characteristics in male fish, and damage and deform sea urchins, and can even accumulate in the tissues of dolphins! And of course, one has to think – if these chemicals can do all of this to marine life, what are they doing to us as humans? And so all of a sudden, consumers started to become more cognizant of potential human health issues related to sunscreens.

So the FDA did a few studies to see exactly how much of these chemicals were absorbed into the bloodstream after application – something that had not been studied before. The results were stunning: out of the six popular synthetic chemical UV filters studied, every one exceeded the FDA’s safety threshold of 0.5 nanograms per milliliter – the threshold at which the FDA says the ingredient should be analyzed to see if there is an increased risk of cancer, birth defects, etc. What is even more incredible and terrifying is the degree to which they exceeded this threshold – especially oxybenzone. After four days of use, subjects who had oxybenzone-containing sunscreen applied were found to have a concentration of up to 219 nanograms of oxybenzone per milliliter of blood. And while the effects of ~200 ng/mL of oxybenzone in the blood are still unknown, note that just 4 ng/mL of THC (the compound that gets you high when you consume marijuana) corresponds to 0.04% blood alcohol which is the level you would find in a 180-lb drinker. Take this into consideration when I also tell you that as of 2018 data, oxybenzone was in 66% or so of sunscreen products, according to an Environmental Working Group analysis, and that some of these active sunscreen ingredients were found to continue to accumulate in blood.

So after reviewing results from the initial study in 2019, the FDA issued a proposed rule that downgraded 12 active synthetic chemical sunscreen ingredients from the “Generally Recognized as Safe and Effective” status with the exceptions of zinc oxide and titanium dioxide, the only two mineral sunscreens, until more ingredient safety data are generated. The proposal was supposed to be finalized in November of 2019 but was overtaken by the coronavirus pandemic. Somehow, sunscreen legislation found its way into the 2020 CARES Act that President Trump signed into law, and things began to get confusing even for the experts. Now, the FDA is required to propose a revised sunscreen order by September 2021. It is unclear as to whether additional safety studies will still be required. In the meantime, the personal care product corporations that sell the popular sunscreen products have been spending time downplaying the cause for alarm. When September comes, no one knows what will happen next.

Nevertheless, consumers in the U.S., and especially those who are aware of the new ban in Hawaii of oxybenzone and octinoxate, have begun to shift towards safer, mineral-based sunscreens that are not as convenient to apply and wear. Ironically, some of you may remember how “back in the day” it was kind of cool to have the thick, colored zinc oxide smeared on your face kind of like a stripe. And honestly, that is the safest thing to do right now, because it works as a physical blocker and there is no danger of skin absorption. It’s almost like wearing a piece of clothing to protect yourself. But it’s like a thick cream, and of course, nobody really wants a thick cream, right? Also, especially if you’re of a non-white ethnicity, you may not really want to have something really white and pasty on your skin.

So here is the scary thing. Because so many companies are feeling the pressure to reformulate with either less or no synthetic chemicals, and are trying to make consumers happy with transparent, convenient formulations, with a high SPF, they are stuck between a rock and a hard place. If you want to get a high SPF with the safest form of zinc (non-nano) it takes upwards of 18-25% zinc oxide in formulation, which is the upper limit of what the FDA allows for zinc oxide in formulation. But that means your formulation is going to be thick and pasty. So what a lot of these companies are doing is adding an inactive ingredient called butyloctyl salicylate, which functions as an SPF booster.

Why is this a big deal? Well, some of you who have perhaps struggled with acne may be familiar with salicylic acid, a popular active ingredient in skin creams that essentially is an anti-inflammatory – a.k.a, it decreases skin redness, right? Butyloctyl salicylate falls within the same family as this popular ingredient, and it is theorized that it works well as an SPF booster because of its anti-inflammatory properties. It is also very cheap. The scary part is that a product that touts a high SPF but contains this booster may not actually be protecting you from the sun to the degree that you think – it just means that it allows your skin to not get sunburned so quickly. This means the formulation conveniently passes the FDA-mandated SPF tests on human subjects, therefore achieving a high SPF number, but that sunburn is still there, and it will show up later. It would seem that no one wants to talk about this or look into it, for two reasons — butyloctyl salicylate is so cheap, and well, what else is there to do to meet consumer demand at the price points they are familiar with?