Those Sunscreens Could Kill You
About 10 years ago, I published a book about skin cancer.
Back then, all my smart friends knew that the sun caused skin cancer and that skin cancer can be fatal. So they were lathering themselves and their children with suntan lotion every time they stepped outside.
Like them, I’d read the scary reports. But the idea that the sun could be inherently bad for Homo sapiens made no sense to me. The sun, I knew, was the source of all life on earth. Plus, being outside in the sun felt so naturally good. Like drinking spring water or swimming in the ocean.
A colleague, Jon Herring, did the research and most of the writing for the book. His conclusion was that, yes, I was mostly right. Too much sun – i.e., getting a sunburn – can, if the exposure is repeated, result in the less-harmful forms of skin cancer: squamous and basal cell. But the sun in healthy doses is not only good for you, it is really good at producing Vitamin D. And Vitamin D is superbly good at protecting us from all sorts of cancers, including melanoma, which is the kind of skin cancer that kills.
If this is true, how did we come to believe that even a bit of sun would could kill us?
Jon also discovered that many of the studies that linked sun exposure to skin cancer were funded by… you guessed it! Coppertone!
And here’s another discovery that Jon made: Of the six most popular sunscreens on the market at the time, five had carcinogenic ingredients! And something like three of those ingredients were activated by the sun!
I was hoping that the book would go viral. It didn’t. And most of my smart friends are still coating themselves in sunblock when they go out.
I talk about it now and then. And I’ve given away many copies of the book. But it’s not much on my mind. So I was interested to see this in a recent blog post from my friend Dr. Al Sears:
A new study, commissioned by the FDA, who has told us for years that sunscreen is unsafe, looked at six common toxic sunscreen ingredients – and found that these chemicals don’t just affect your skin. They accumulate in your bloodstream at dangerously high concentrations – far higher than the FDA’s own safety threshold.
An editorial accompanying the FDA research in the Journal of the American Medical Association, admitted: “Sunscreens have not been subjected to standard drug safety testing.” Even The Wall Street Journal has started asking questions about why these toxins are still used in sunscreens.
The six chemicals – avobenzone, oxybenzone, octocrylene, homosalate, octisalate, and octinoxate – have been linked to multiple short- and long-term health problems, including hormone disruption and, ironically, skin cancer. The FDA has also requested safety data from sunscreen manufacturers on further six ingredients known to have toxic effects.
These chemicals mimic estrogen, causing hormonal imbalances, allergic reactions, skin irritations, and reproductive harm. They also attack the cells in your body, causing premature aging. And studies show they can promote the onset of breast cancer.
