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Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

valisure.com

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Re: Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

#271

Post by casefields »

dragonwriter wrote: post #191
dcolkitt wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm gonna make a radical suggestion. Maybe just try ditching sunscreen altogether. Yes, it's probably true that exposure to the sun increases the risk of skin cancer. But in the US skin cancer accounts for fewer than 1% of all deaths. In contrast the quintile of people with the highest exposure to the sun have half the all-cause mortality as the quintile with the lowest sun exposure.[1] In particular sunbathers enjoy…

> In particular sunbathers enjoy significantly lower rates of heart disease, liver cancer, colon cancer, and neurodegenerative disease. That’s mildly interesting, but without analysis that controls for confounding causes, I wouldn’t drive lifestyle choices.

Start here to find all the studies:

Is Sunscreen the New Margarine?

https://www.outsideonline.com/2380751/sunscreen-sun-exposure...

Re: Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

#272

Post by rsfern »

netizen-936824 wrote: post #12
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.

Does volatility imply constituents? A quick search shows that oxybenzone is a compound containing two carbon rings.

Volatility is more about vapor pressure, so how much a compound likes to evaporate, rather than structural components per se.

I couldn’t find any vapor pressure data online , but the boiling temp of oxybenzone is about 70C higher than for benzene, so it’s probably somewhat less volatile.

Oxybenzone: https://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C131577&Mask=4

Benzene: https://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C71432&Mask=4#Ther...

Re: Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

#274

Post by kar5pt »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #270
azinman2 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A contextless number doesn’t mean much. Maybe that’s enough? Too much? Too little? The FDA doesn’t need to buy billion dollar aircraft carriers, they need to pay people salaries and equip them to investigate, test, read papers, and set standards.

It means our government prioritizes spending on war over two orders of magnitude more than the safety of its own citizens.

No it doesn't. I spend more on coffee than I do on water. That doesn't mean I "prioritize coffee over water". It means that I don't need to spend as much on water to get what I need.

Re: Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

#275

Post by ineedasername »

rchiba wrote: post #15

I found this article through a friend of my wife's who is a skincare expert. Check your cabinets. I actually found the Neutrogena lotion that we use in the table of affected products! List of affected products: https://www.valisure.com/wp-content/uploads/Valisure-Citizen... List of unaffected products: https://www.valisure.com/wp-content/uploads/Attachment-A-Tab...

Neutrogena's had crazy high amounts compare to the lower level ones-- hundreds of times more benzene, up to 6ppm. For reference, even 0.5ppm over a long period of time significantly increases cancer risks: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5946455/

Re: Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

#276

Post by jms »

dcolkitt wrote: post #179
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.

I'm gonna make a radical suggestion. Maybe just try ditching sunscreen altogether. Yes, it's probably true that exposure to the sun increases the risk of skin cancer. But in the US skin cancer accounts for fewer than 1% of all deaths. In contrast the quintile of people with the highest exposure to the sun have half the all-cause mortality as the quintile with the lowest sun exposure.[1] In particular sunbathers enjoy…

If you're in a high UV area and you want to try something like this, use a UV tracker so you can be informed about the risks.

I have a widget on my phone that displays the current level and estimated burn time, and can pull up a graph of estimated & forecast (turns out cloudy days DO generally block a lot of UV).

It's great to be able to get as much skin exposed as possible during the low UV periods for gentle UV exposure, then know when to cover up & sunscreen during the harsh periods.

Re: Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

#277

Post by CydeWeys »

pessimizer wrote: post #239
CydeWeys wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... quite possibly still not as much as if they hadn't used it, though. So maybe not that ironic.

Or quite possibly far more than if they hadn't used it, if we're just going to make things up.

Yeah, the guy I was replying to was making stuff up. I'm making the point that sunscreen has a positive purpose, and you could potentially be doing a lot more harm than good if some trace benzene ends up in you frying to a crisp instead and getting melanoma.

You need to do the risk analysis. Until you do, you can't possibly say it's ironic using sunscreen since it could easily be doing more good than harm.

Re: Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

#278

Post by ineedasername »

azinman2 wrote: post #2

So this is bad, obviously, but I want to plug Valisure and consumerlab both. For whatever reason there’s so little testing out there for both generic drugs and vitamins and supplements, and both of these guys really do have our backs. I’m very happy to support both to be doing what I feel like the FDA with more funding should be doing themselves.

there’s so little testing

Seriously. It seems like even relatively loose QC would run full a full chemical composition analysis on the occasional random batch.

Re: Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

#279

Post by ineedasername »

azinman2 wrote: post #257
totalZero wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2019, the FDA budget was 0.86% of the DOD budget. As in, not within two orders of magnitude.

A contextless number doesn’t mean much. Maybe that’s enough? Too much? Too little? The FDA doesn’t need to buy billion dollar aircraft carriers, they need to pay people salaries and equip them to investigate, test, read papers, and set standards.

You make a strong argument for the FDA to get its own fleet of aircraft carriers and probably ground support as well. I bet they'd have many fewer enforcement issues. Then again the optics of the FDA sending a nuke to a company that is non-compliant in it's handling of medical grade radioactive isotopes might be a little bad.

Re: Benzene detected in many sunscreen products

#280

Post by ineedasername »

p49k wrote: post #56
jeffbee wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet if you wait a month, you would get different results. These brands are just brands, they buy product in bulk from manufacturers you've never heard of and stick it in a bottle with a lot of words on it to try to pretend like their product is differentiated.

This might be true at the very low end of the market, but most sunscreen brands that people care about enough to have loyalty are uniquely sourced products.

Not if they're all getting a key component from the same supplier. Every niche brand and even someone like CVS isn't going to run it's own chemical refineries for each ingredient in the sunscreen. They're going to use a relatively small group of suppliers. It only takes one of them selling to dozens of manufacturers to taint both mainstream and obscure brands.
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