How safe and effective are the leading brands of sunscreens?
A Guide to safe, effective sunscreens Environmental Working Group’s 2009 Sunscreen Guide lists the top easy-to-find sunscreens to keep you safe and healthy this summer. Does your SPF 15 lip balm actually protect your lips from sunburn? That’s info you can now find out thanks to the new and improved 2009 Sunscreen Guide from Environmental Working Group. This year, lip balm data’s been added to the guide — a much needed addition, since w of 5 lip balms apparently don’t quite do their job. Hundreds of products with sunscreens are evaluated and rated for UVA and UVB protection, safety of ingredients, and product stability. But to make things easy for you, EWG’s also put together top 10 lists of the best sunscreens — as well as the best moisturizers and lip balms with SPF. And to further simplify things, a handy PDF 1-pager has a list of the 9 best easy-to-find sunscreens (PDF) along with label-reading tips and sunscreen use recommendations. Take it to a store near you to get the sun protec
Here is the part of the article where I read about it: Summary of 2009 Sunscreen Analysis In an analysis of 1,581 name-brand sunscreens* on the market in summer 2009, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that 3 out of 5 sunscreen products offer inadequate protection from the sun, or contain ingredients with significant safety concerns. Leading brands were the worst offenders: None of market leader Coppertone’s 43 sunscreen products met EWG’s criteria for safety and effectiveness, and only 2 of 152 products from Banana Boat and Neutrogena, the second- and third-largest manufacturers, are recommended by EWG. Many products on the market present obvious safety and effectiveness concerns, including 1 of every 9 that does not protect from UVA radiation. This problem is aggravated by the fact that FDA has not finalized comprehensive sunscreen safety standards they began drafting 30 years ago. Overall we identified 78 products that offer very good sun protection with ingredients that pr
