The federal Food and Drug Administration’s new sunscreen rules seem likely to do away with the worst hype in ads and on labels. The agency has barred the claims “waterproof,” “sweatproof” and “sunblock,” boasts that were never achievable. The FDA has, for the first time, set a minimum performance standard for sunscreens that use the term “broad spectrum” to denote that they provide a measure of protection from ultraviolet-A rays.
New Rules for Advertising Sunscreen Products
But the rules issued June 14, to take effect in the summer of 2012, address what’s on the outside of the bottle, not what’s in it. Nearly 33 years after it began considering regulation of sunscreen products, the FDA has yet to review or certify the safety of chemicals formulated into sunscreen products.
A particularly troublesome regulatory gap involves a vitamin A derivative called retinyl palmitate, often found in sunscreens and other products used on the skin. For some years, government and independent scientists have been investigating this chemical as a possible photocarcinogen – meaning that it may speed the development of skin tumors and lesions on sun-exposed skin.
Scientific Study Reveals that Common Sunscreen Chemical Gives Mice Skin Cancer….and Humans too!
The most recent government scientific study, made public last January by the National Toxicology Program, an interagency group housed within the National Institutes of Health, has demonstrated that retinyl palmitate speeds photo-carcinogenic effects on test animals. The study, entitled Photococarcinogenesis Study Of Retinoic Acid And Retinyl Palmitate and conducted at a federal research center co-hosted by the FDA and NTP, found that mice treated with small doses of retinyl palmitate and ultraviolet light developed skin tumors faster than untreated, light-exposed mice or those treated only with a control cream. There were more numerous tumors on every animal treated with retinyl palmitate.
This means that the sunscreen additive Retinyl Palmitate increases the rate of cancer formation in mice. That doesn't exactly sound like what we want in a Sunscreen.
This means that the sunscreen additive Retinyl Palmitate increases the rate of cancer formation in mice. That doesn't exactly sound like what we want in a Sunscreen.
Go to this website for more: www.ewg.org. Your family’s health is at risk.
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Click here to see the Best Sunscreens for your family.
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