A Look into Sunscreen

Wear your sunscreen.

We hear this advice all the time. If you're going to be out in the sun, wear your sunscreen.

Let's look at two aspects of this advice that we may often overlook: our need for Vitamin D and the chemicals in most sunscreens that may do a lot more harm than good.

Vitamin D

When considering whether to put on sunscreen or not, remember that our body produces Vitamin D when we're exposed to sunlight. This can't happen if we coat ourselves with sunscreen every time we step out of our front door. We all need a certain amount of sun exposure to stay healthy.

Here's more about Vitamin D from the article Lack of Sunshine Causes One Million Deaths a Year:

Vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin, is different from other vitamins in that it influences your entire body -- receptors that respond to the vitamin have been found in almost every type of human cell, from your brain to your bones.

Optimizing your vitamin D levels could help you to prevent as many as 16 different types of cancer including pancreatic, lung, breast, ovarian, prostate, and colon cancers.

On the MedlinePlus website, they give quite a detailed list of things that Vitamin D is good for.

Basically, it's important for your overall health. Certainly some amount of sun exposure is healthy and necessary!

Sunscreen

But okay, there definitely are times when you'll be out in the sun for long periods and need to protect your skin. Can you just grab any old bottle and assume it's safe and effective?

One big thing to look for is to make sure it protects against UVA rays as well as UVB (not all protect against both). UVB is what helps to produce Vitamin D, but UVA penetrates deep in our skin and causes damage. So don't just look at SPF, but make sure it covers both types of rays.

Another consideration is whether or not there are harmful chemicals in the product that will defeat the purpose if you're trying to keep yourself healthy and cancer free.

We certainly can't rely on label claims that the product is "natural," "safe," "organic," or anything else along those lines, because what they claim can be completely false (there is no regulation on using those terms).

Since most of us can't look at a long list of ingredients in a commercial product and be able to identify every single one as either safe or harmful, then we should turn to those who can.

I often go to the Cosmetic Database when I need to look up information on a product or ingredient. This database was put together by the Environmental Working Group (EWG). Today, I came across their sunscreen guide:

2013 Guide to Sunscreens

They give lots of wonderful information, including 9 Surprising Facts About Sunscreen, and also a list of "184 beach & sport sunscreens (that) meet EWG's criteria" for safety and effectiveness.

Another one of my main go-to sources, Dr. Mercola's website, has many articles about sunscreen and its damaging affects (the sunscreen itself and the Vitamin D deficiencies it leads to).

In one of his articles, Four Out of Five Sunscreens May be Hazardous to your Health, he gives a list of the common harmful ingredients in sunscreens. This is a good list to have when looking at your current bottle of sunscreen at home and when you (most likely) need to purchase a new one.

Examining My Family's Sunscreen

After deciding to write on this topic, naturally I was going to pick up my own family's bottle that we've been using for a couple years and research its safety.

Our bottle at home.
(Don't buy this.)

I looked up our NO-AD Spf 60 Sunblock Lotion (recommended by the Skin Cancer Foundation as it says on the label) on the cosmetic database to find out it has a score of 7.

That's 7 out of 10...10 being the worst.

Here are the specific rating it gives:

Overall Hazard: moderate to high

Cancer: low to moderate

Developmental and reproductive toxicity: high

Of the ingredient list, five of them enhance skin absorption (so all the chemicals get absorbed really well) and six of the ingredients have a score of 7 or 8 (remember that 10 is the worst).

Of these six ingredients with bad scores, three of them are parabens (preservatives) that are endocrine disruptors, one is the generic ingredient fragrance (which is a blanket term for plastic chemicals that smell good), one is the active ingredient oxybenzone (which "absorbs through the skin in significant amounts," can cause cellular level changes and is an endocrine disruptor), and one is Retinyl Palmitate (which "when exposed to UV light, retinol compounds break down and produce toxic free radicals that can damage DNA and cause gene mutations, a precursor to cancer"*).

I also looked up my bottle of sunscreen on Good Guide. It gets a health score of ZERO...(0 out of 10, zero is the worst).

* This ingredient seems to have some controversy over it. Some sources say that the EWG is wrong about this claim, but those saying that seem to be tied to the sunscreen industry. You just have to decide who you will believe.

***

After finding all of this out about our only bottle of sunscreen in the house (and being quite horrified by it), I realized that I needed to replace it immediately.

I went out that evening to two stores and scanned the backs of all the sunscreen bottles. I couldn't buy anything out of probably 40 products. They all had basically the same nasty ingredients.

I can only assume that most other drug stores, grocery stores and big box stores will all be the same way. So I'm forced to search for the needle in the haystack (which sadly, most Americans won't bother doing...or even know that it's necessary in the first place). It shouldn't be that way. We should have better choices readily available.

There are healthier sunscreens out there, you just have to know which ones they are. Here are a few places to start looking:

EWG's Guide to Sunscreens

Good Guide's Best Sunscreen Ratings

SafeMama's Safer Sunscreen Cheat Sheet

Be smart about the sun, but also about what you put on your skin.