![]() They might even recommend banning an ingredient altogether. below a set percentage, or only in certain products (e.g. These opinions include recommendations for using the ingredient, e.g. Their very impressive CVs AND conflicts of interest are all publicly available, if you want to stalk them.Įvery once in a while – if there’s important new data, or someone’s invented a new sunscreen ingredient – the European Commission gets the SCCS to look at potential risks and write an opinion. There’s also chemists, pharmacists and dermatologists. Their members are mostly toxicologists who specialise in risk assessment. They look at sunscreen and other personal care products, but also household products like detergents, toys and clothes, and services like tanning and tattooing. ![]() They focus on checking the safety of consumer products (these self-explanatory names are putting me out of a job…). They’re written by the Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (SCCS). They’re * scientific* opinions, based on interpreting evidence according to almost 200 pages of guidelines.īut the word “opinion” is important – we’ll come back to that later. These “opinions” sound a bit more handwavy than they actually are. One thing I love about the EU is that they show their working, and it’s relatively easy to follow – it’s in these SCCS Opinions. For these, the two regions had similar maximum percentages… until 2021 when the EU started shaking things up. The EU has about 20 common ones, including all 7 from the US. They only have about 7 commonly used “chemical” sunscreen ingredients: The US list hasn’t changed since 1999, when avobenzone was added. But the situation is actually kind of the opposite of what you tend to hear – the EU allows a whole bunch more sunscreen ingredients than the US. When it comes to sunscreens, and beauty products in general, people are always comparing the EU and the US, and one of the biggest differences is the sunscreen ingredients. This also tells you the rules for using them, including the maximum percentages. Their safety gets checked a lot more than other ingredients, and you can’t use them in sunscreens until they’ve been added to this special list (Annex VI). There are less strict rules about cosmetics than drugs, but the UV filtering ingredients that help sunscreens screen out the sun are still in a special category. In most of the world, sunscreens are cosmetics not drugs, and this is the case in the EU. So let’s dive into why you probably don’t need to freak out, and what you might want to do based on this info.Ī disclaimer: This is all going to be very simplified, I am not a toxicologist, but some toxicologists did help me out with the script. ![]() To be fair, if you only read this sentence, it does sound a bit scary. So some people (including scientists from other fields) saw this and started making bold statements about how US sunscreens with 6% are unsafe, and telling people who are a bit more familiar with this area to “log off” because they’ve taken this one sentence very literally. They now recommend a maximum of 2.2% in body products (6% is still the maximum recommended for face products). For example, oxybenzone was allowed in sunscreens at a maximum of 6%.īut the SCCS have now said: “The use of benzophenone-3 as a UV-filter up to a maximum concentration of 6% in sunscreen products, either in the form of body cream, sunscreen propellant spray or pump spray, is not safe for the consumer.” As mentioned, the EU has been lowering some sunscreen ingredient limits.
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