More About Sunscreens....Advertising Rules, Cancer and "Best & Worst" List

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.

Go to this website for more: www.ewg.org. Your family’s health is at risk.

Click here to go to our favorite Sunscreen Guide

Click here to see the Best Sunscreens for your family.

Click here to see the Worst Sunscreens for your family.

Pesticides in Your Produce

Everybody knows that you should eat your fruits and vegetables. But do you also know which ones could contain dangerous levels of pesticides? The health benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables far outweigh the risks of pesticide exposure. Use EWG's (Environmental Working Group)Shopper's Guide to Pesticides  (a download from our weekly newsletter)  to reduce your exposures as much as possible, but eating conventionally-grown produce is far better than not eating fruits and vegetables at all. 


The Environmental Working Group  (EWG) is an American environmental organization that specializes in research and advocacy in the areas of toxic chemicals, environmental studies and corporate accountability.
 
The Shopper's Guide to Pesticide in Produce will help you determine which fruits and vegetables have the most pesticide residues and are the most important to buy organic. You can and should lower your pesticide intake substantially by avoiding the 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables and eating the least contaminated produce. 


If you get our Email Newsletter, you can download a guide to print out and fold for your wallet or purse. Get on our email newsletter list from our website www.b2hc.com. A recent CNN article also addressed this growing concern. Check it out here. Oh and if you wonder whether pesticides are bad for you...just ask the bugs.

There is an interesting relationship between most produce farmers and the pesticide industry. Read the EWG article here for more about that.

The Dirty Dozen: The Produce with the Highest Level of Pesticide Content

Buy these fruits and veggies organic (1. = Highest Pesticide Content)

1. Apples
2. Celery
3. Strawberries
4. Peaches
5. Spinach
6. Imported Nectarines
7. Imported Grapes
8. Sweet bell peppers
9. Potatoes
10. Domestic Blueberries
11. Lettuce
12. Kale / Collard Greens

Clean 15

Lowest fruits and veggies in pesticide content (1. = Lowest Pesticide Content)

1. Onion
2. Sweet Corn (Buy Organic if you are concerned about GMO Corn)
3. Pineapples
4. Avocado
5. Asparagus
6. Sweet Peas
7. Mangoes
8. Eggplant
9. Domestic Cantaloupe
10. Kiwi
11. Cabbage
12. Watermelon
13. Sweet Potatoes
14. Grapefruit
15. Mushrooms

Toxic Levels of Benzene Found in Soft Drinks

Betweeen 1995 and 2001, FDA tested 24 samples of diet soda for benzene in its Total Diet Study: Nineteen (79 percent) were contaminated with benzene above the federal tap water standard of 5 parts per billion (ppb). The average benzene level was 19 ppb, nearly four times the tap water standard. The maximum detection was 55 ppb, 11 times the tap water limit. Each test result is from a composite of three individual soda purchases in three different cities that are blended together to make one sample. Go to http://www.ewg.org/ for more information.

Test results for other drinks also revealed the presence of highly elevated benzene levels. One cola drink the FDA tested was contaminated at 138 ppb, 27 times the 5 ppb tap water limit, and a fruit drink had 95 ppb. Orange and grapefruit juice also had benzene at levels well above FDA's 5 ppb level of concern.

"These results confirm our suspicions that there are highly elevated benzene levels in some very popular drinks," said Richard Wiles, EWG's senior vice president. "Once again, FDA has sided with big food companies and misled consumers about the problem of benzene in beverages, withholding data and issuing public reassurances that are contradicted by their own test results."

Benzene's toxicity is not in dispute. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "Benzene is carcinogenic to humans and no safe level of exposure can be recommended." It is directly linked to leukemia and crosses the placenta to the fetus at levels greater than or equal to the amount in the mother's blood. The chemical is frequently detected in the food supply as a result of industrial pollution, making additional and avoidable exposures of even greater concern.

Environmental Working Groups (http://www.ewg.org/)

On February 24 and February 27, 2006, EWG purchased the following drinks at four major retail outlets in Washington, DC. They all contained ascorbic acid and either sodium benzoate or potassium benzoate—the ingredients that the FDA and the beverage industry have said can mix together to form benzene, a known human carcinogen.

Country Time Lemonade
Crystal Light Sunrise Classic Orange
Diet Pepsi Twist
Diet Pepsi Vanilla
Diet RockStar Energy Drink
Fanta Orange
Fanta Pineapple
Fruit20 Plus 10 Natural Apple
Giant Fruity Punch Cooler
Hawaiian Punch Fruit Juicy Red
Hawaiian Punch Lemonade
Hi-C Blast, Orange Supernova
Kool-Aid Jammers Blue-Raspberry
Kool-Aid Jammers Cherry
Kool-Aid Jammers Grape
Kool-Aid Jammers Orange
Lo-Carb Monster Energy
Monster Energy
Pepsi Twist Lemon
RockStar Energy Drink
Sierra Mist
Sunkist
Sunny D
Sunny D Baja Sunny D Intense Sport Cool Punch
Sunny D Orange-Fused Strawberry
Sunny D Smooth
Sunny D Smooth + Calcium
Tampico Citrus PunchTampico Grape Punch
Tampico Tropical Punch
Tropicana Twister Diet Soda (Diet Orange)
Tropicana Twister Soda Grape
Tropicana Twister Soda Orange
Tropicana Twister Soda Strawberry