As I mentioned in my last post, about the only thing that seems to have changed with respect to the state of sunscreens and sun safety products is that the mainstream media is starting to pay more attention to this issue and take a frank look at what needs to be done.
The New York Times appears to have taken the lead here with its recent Room for Debate blog: What We Still Don’t Know About Sunscreens. In Room for Debate, The Times invites knowledgeable outside contributors to discuss news events and other timely issues. For this conversation, the Times convened the following contributors:
- Darrell S. Rigel, Clinical Professor of Dermatology
- Sonya Lunder, Environmental Working Group
- Michael K. Hansen, Consumers Union
- Kerry Hanson, Chemist, University of California, Riverside
- Lenora Felderman, Dermatologist
Darrell Rigel tackles the subject of better labeling and better ingredients. Apparently in the U.S. there are only 17 approved sunscreen agents, while Europe has 28, and Japan has more than 40. He blames the FDA for lagging in formally approving regulations and feels that rather than wait until they can come up with their own standards for testing UVA that we simply adopt the same standards as Europe has.
Sonya Lunder looks at an alarming new finding: the use of Vitamin A (in the synthetic form of Retinyl Palmitate) in sun care products may be accelerating the development of skin lesions and tumors when applied in the presence of sunlight! According to Lunder, this ingredient can be found in a whopping 40% (almost half!) of sunscreens used in the U.S.
Michael Hansen takes the FDA to task for not being more aggressive in demanding and enforcing the use of warnings on product labels that would clarify which products provide actual protect against UVA. A product may have a high SPF which means it protects against UVB radiation but that doesn’t mean it protects against UVA. He also feels that the FDA should more thoroughly investigate the health concerns that have been raised about various sunscreen ingredients.
Kerry Hanson questions whether our current concept of sun care protection needs to be redefined given what we’ve learned about the difference between UVB and UVA exposures and their respective roles in causing or promoting skin cancer. Since companies don’t have the substantial resources needed to fund the research (or the proper impartiality), there’s an opportunity for government agencies like the FDA, National Science Foundation, and the NIH to jump in and take the lead.
Lenora Felderman laments the false sense of security that sunscreens provide and echoes the other contributors’ call for better and more responsible action by the FDA.
Since it was posted on July 5th, this has generated over 200 comments. You can read the full discussions here and add your comments as well.
What do you think the FDA’s top priorities in this area should be?
Every year around this time of the year, I scan industry trade rags and do some searching on the Internet in an attempt to find out what’s new in the market for sunscreens. And every year I marvel at how some things never seem to change! In fact they appear to be getting worse!
Coinciding with the introduction of this legislation, the Safe Cosmetics Campaign (who was instrumental in pushing this through) released a new video called “The Story of Cosmetics” –a sequel of sorts to Annie Leonard’s 2007 widely viewed and critically acclaimed video “The Story of Stuff.” This is a clever animated video that, like its predecessor, attempts to spell out in the simplest possible way the problems inherent with the status quo –in this case: the way cosmetics manufacturers make products. As you can probably imagine, it’s already rankled the cosmetics industry! I highly recommend it and you can view it below. If this is a subject you want to know more about, I’ll be blogging about it in the coming weeks so stay tuned in to the Aroma Zone.
