Sunscreen news

[VeloVT]

I have run across Skin Deep/the EWG website a few times. I am fairly skeptical. EWG is an advocacy organization, not a scientific organization. It's not clear what the qualifications of its "researchers" are -- the "About" and "FAQ" sections of the website are suspiciously vague about this. The fact that they are an advocacy group that campaigns on behalf of "natural" products and touts the dangers and carcinogenicity of practically everything makes me doubt how neutral and scientific their evaluations can be. I'm sure there are lots of FDA-approved ingredients out there that are less than safe, but until they show me some serious credentials I'm inclined to view EWG as being unduly alarmist.

I would also like to point out that in the sunscreen review, the copy is quite misleading in that they pull you in with the assertion that many conventional sunscreens are ineffective and don't protect against UVA. Then they go on to give poor marks to products that even by their own standards give perfectly fine broad-spectrum coverage (like many of the Neutrogena products), but contain "nasty chemicals" that EWG doesn't like. However, the way the report is written they elide these two issues and imply that the sunscreens that are "bad" because of chemicals also offer inadequate coverage (some of them may, but many don't). This tends to confirm my suspicions about EWG.

I'm not convinced.

Of course, it is true that there are only a handful (3-5) ingredients approved in the US that give UVA coverage, and plenty of sunscreens don't contain them, so you do need to read the label and look for zinc, titanium, Avobenzene, mexoryl, etc -- but EWG is greatly overstating the problem in my opinion.