Products sold in Europe, Japan and South Korea offer more protection from the sun. In the U.S., the key ingredients aren’t FDA-approved.
When dermatologist Dr. Adewole “Ade” Adamson sees people spritzing sunscreen as if it’s cologne at the pool where he lives in Austin, Texas, he wants to intervene. “My wife says I shouldn’t,” he said, “even though most people rarely use enough sunscreen.”
At issue is not just whether people are using enough sunscreen, but what ingredients are in it.
The Food and Drug Administration’s ability to approve the chemical filters in sunscreens that are sold in countries such as Japan, South Korea, and France is hamstrung by a 1938 U.S. law that requires sunscreens to be tested on animals and classified as drugs, rather than as cosmetics as they are in much of the world. So Americans are not likely to get those better sunscreens — which block the ultraviolet rays that can cause skin cancer and lead to wrinkles — in time for this summer, or even the next.
Sunscreen makers say that requirement is unfair because companies including BASF Corp. and L’Oréal, which make the newer sunscreen chemicals, submitted safety data on sunscreen chemicals to the European Union authorities some 20 years ago.
They could simply declare the decades-long experience with that kind of sunscreen outside the US as “animal test” and go on.
Regulating sunscreen as a drug seems fairly reasonable to me. Sunscreens should be required to be effective and proved to be so before being on the market. Cosmetics don’t have that requirement. Maybe they should make the process easier and relax the animal testing requirement in cases where it’s been used on humans for decades. But I still want corporations to jump through some hoops proving something I’m trusting my health to actually works.
Agreed, but also, maybe someone should prove or disprove those newer ingredients pronto
Well, what’s preventing the corporations from lobbying to change the rules to benefit them, just like every other time? I’m not going to cry because corpos haven’t bought enough congresscritters.
Why can’t they get FDA approval? Seems sus as fuck.
Well, if you read the article … :/
a 1938 U.S. law that requires sunscreens to be tested on animals and classified as drugs, rather than as cosmetics as they are in much of the world.
companies are wary of the FDA process because of the cost and their fear that additional animal testing could ignite a consumer backlash in the European Union, which bans animal testing of cosmetics, including sunscreen.
Won’t someone think of the poor corpos! Corpos like BASF and L’Oréal, which only had profits last year of €225,000,000 and €32,000,000,000!
