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Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

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Re: Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

#101

Post by fallingfrog »

leesalminen wrote: post #55
throwkeep wrote: post #51

I don't understand why people are so eager to slather chemicals on their skin, when we evolved with the sun and it's not hard for most people to avoid sun burn. You just have get sun exposure on a somewhat regular basis (healthy to do anyway) and acclimate between seasons (ie, don't go abruptly from no sun to all the sun).

I live at altitude (~8000 ft) and have very fair skin. I burn within 20 minutes of being in direct sunlight. So, I’m not sure what it is I’m supposed to do.

I used to be like that, but I started going outside for a 10 minute walk with a t shirt on every day. (I wore a wide brim hat.) Now, I never get sunburned. My skin doesn’t look any different but it stands up to sunlight a lot better. Ymmv

Re: Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

#102

Post by ceejayoz »

swiley wrote: post #84
TheManInThePub wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Johnson and Johnson - which just payed out on a case relating to cancer from baby-powders I asked this question in another post and did not get a reply. The US links sited state no evidence for talc causing cancer. A search of the NHS website also suggests no clear evidence [1]. Cancer Research (a respected UK charity) give a layman's summary (albeit focusing on ovarian cancer), stating no clear evidence and pointi…

>The US links sited state no evidence for causing cancer. It's benzine. It's a known carcinogen, no need for empiricism here.

There are lots of known carcinogens for which the dosage is important. For example... sunlight.

There's a reason the "this product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer" warning labels are a bit of a joke, after all.

Re: Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

#104

Post by abfan1127 »

romseb wrote: post #92
abfan1127 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is interesting. Given the biodiversity of human beings, it should be safe to say that any product may have negative consequences at scale. Certainly the HN crowd can appreciate what it means to work at scale. The fact that J&J knows these consequences exist and plans for them makes them evil? If your company planned on extra engineering resources strictly to assist launch issues, is that evil? Evil comes from th…

There are benzene-free sunscreen products on the market and J&J could sell such products, but instead they decide not to in order to make more profit.

why would they add benzene to products? how does adding it make it cheaper to increase profits? Its not like some shady benzene dealer pays J&J to sprinkle it in, but only at really low levels (2-6 ppm). Its not like they chose benzene as an active ingredient over zinc oxide.

Engineers are asked all the time on ways to save money. Did they skip a processing step? is their process control not optimized? Of course they are pressured to improve. Lower costs drive down consumer prices and increase profits (thanks 401k).

https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/9279...

Re: Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

#105

Post by gwittel »

jpmattia wrote: post #21

My family recently went through the search for a decent sunscreen and settled on this link for useful info about which sunscreens have nasty chemicals: https://www.ewg.org/sunscreen/ Our search was not exhaustive (and I can't really vouch for the link that was used) so if you have a better link, please don't keep it a secret.

We went through a similar search recently. Part of the challenge is that the US rules are well behind Europe and Asia in terms of whats OK or not ingredient wise. With the new push toward reef friendly ingredients, it also complicates things. Physical barriers like Zinc generally offer reasonable UVB (this is the SPF rating) protection, but poor UVA (not sure there is a rating in US, but you'll see PA++++... on imports).

Ingredients approved in EU and Asia that offer solid UVA and UVB protections are not yet legal in the US [1]. So we get older 'less good' or 'less reef friendly' ingredients instead.

We ended up buying some imported from EU sunscreen. The US market formulation was actually different and lacked the UVA protection.

[1] https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/official-correspondence/co...

Re: Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

#106

Post by asdff »

dylan604 wrote: post #46
tyingq wrote: post #4

Pretty interesting. Some of the products where benzene was detected don't even have anything volatile on their list of active ingredients. "Ethical Zinc Lotion", is just supposed to be 22% zinc oxide, with no Octocrylene, Oxybenzone, etc.

At 22% zinc oxide, you're going to have a layer of white film all over you which most people prefer not to have that look.

zinc sunscreen rubs in if you keep rubbing. it takes longer, which i guess most people just shrug and give up and assume you are coated in white film, but you can in fact rub it in.

Re: Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

#107

Post by chabes »

leesalminen wrote: post #55
throwkeep wrote: post #51

I don't understand why people are so eager to slather chemicals on their skin, when we evolved with the sun and it's not hard for most people to avoid sun burn. You just have get sun exposure on a somewhat regular basis (healthy to do anyway) and acclimate between seasons (ie, don't go abruptly from no sun to all the sun).

I live at altitude (~8000 ft) and have very fair skin. I burn within 20 minutes of being in direct sunlight. So, I’m not sure what it is I’m supposed to do.

I have very fair skin and used to burn easily, but now I don’t wear sunscreen 99% of the time I would have in the past. I just make sure to go outside regularly (starting in the winter months, here in the northern hemisphere) and expose my body to the sun, all year, and not just during vacation months.

UV intensity changes with the seasons. Expose your skin to the sun when UVs are lower and your skin will adjust to the higher UV levels slowly over time.

Before the industrial revolution, lots of work was outdoors, such as farming. Changes in industry drove folks to work more indoors, in factories and offices. Combine that with the culture of working all year and vacationing in the summertime. Folks stayed inside when UV intensity was manageable, and went outside for the bulk of their vacation, when UV levels were more intense. No wonder people think they need a product to protect their skin at all times from UVs.

I’m not against sunscreen. I’m against unnecessary use of a product that encourages more use of said product. At high altitude, I’ll sometimes put zinc on my nose and ears, though I usually wear long sleeves to protect the arms.

Re: Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

#108

Post by saiya-jin »

abfan1127 wrote: post #79
infogulch wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anybody ever wondered, this is a concrete example of what it looks like when a company treats its negative externalities as a "cost of doing business".

this is interesting. Given the biodiversity of human beings, it should be safe to say that any product may have negative consequences at scale. Certainly the HN crowd can appreciate what it means to work at scale. The fact that J&J knows these consequences exist and plans for them makes them evil? If your company planned on extra engineering resources strictly to assist launch issues, is that evil? Evil comes from th…

One is accepting the risk of not knowing almost infinite amount of chemical interaction of human bodies vs some novel chemistry but still maximizing the safety as its simply the right thing to do for everybody long term, including J&J. The other is accepting the usage of highly-questionable-at-best compounds as part of baby care products, because current bonuses take priority above everything else.

Evil comes in many ways. This can be argued is just massive negligence and ignorance, or even arrogance. As a father, when all this topic is paired with babies, I don't mind calling it evil and treat it as such.

Re: Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

#110

Post by notacoward »

hristov wrote: post #69
chmod600 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't find neutrogena in the original article or either of your links. Where does it say that's high in benzene?

The original article has a link to a petition the lab is making to the government. There they show a table of sunscreens sorted by concentration of benzene. Most of the top 20 entries are nutrogena.

I think that's a bit misleading. The clearest pattern I see in that data is that sprays are particularly bad. The top of the list is dominated by them, out of all proportion to their prevalence in the market overall. Any manufacturer who makes a lot of different products, and particularly spray products, is likely to have some entries on that list. Indeed, if you look at Appendix A (the "not detected" list) you'll find a ton of other products from Neutrogena, Banana Boat, and all the other big players. And a much lower percentage of sprays.

Without adjusting for the number of products a vendor makes, and how closely they're related (e.g. 70SPF vs. 50SPF versions of the same thing), you're going to get the wrong idea of who the "bad guys" are. For example, "Fruit of the Earth" has only one product on either list, and it's on the bad one. Would you buy their product over a Neutrogena gel or lotion?

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