How Safe is Your Sunscreen

Now that we are officially entering into the actual season of Summer- Friday is the first full day of Summer- we need to be really thinking about sunscreen.  You probably should have been thinking about that way before this, but the weather actually taking a turn to being much more "summer-like" is a good reminder.

The question comes up about whether or not sunscreen is actually safe when referring to the active ingredients.  Apparently there are only 2 ingredients that the FDA says are absolutely safe.  They are zinc oxide and titanium dioxide.  And there are two of them that are deemed as not safe and they are aminobenzoic acid (PABA) and trolamine salicylate. The rest of them could be ok, but they fall into the "not sure" list.

Sunscreen active ingredient safety and eectiveness Two ingredients (zinc oxide and titanium dioxide) are proposed to be safe and eective for sunscreen use and two (aminobenzoic acid (PABA) and trolamine salicylate) are proposed as not safe and eective for sunscreen use. FDA proposes that it needs more safety information for the remaining 12 sunscreen ingredients (cinoxate, dioxybenzone, ensulizole, homosalate, meradimate, octinoxate, octisalate, octocrylene, padimate O, sulisobenzone, oxybenzone, avobenzone).

But one thing that the FDA and every dermatologist agrees with is that sunscreen, no matter what, is better than no sunscreen.