What's In Your Sunscreen?

Summer’s here and that means long days spent at pools, beaches, lakes and parks. In this family it can also mean some nasty sunburns if we’re not careful. I’m fair skinned but only burn if I’m out for a really long time without any protection where as Todd burns through his t-shirt, it’s that Norwegian/Scottish blood of his. The kids have never had a sunburn because I always make sure to lather them up. But if I had to guess I'd say Tyler takes after me and Dylan takes after Todd in the skin department, which is funny because in looks and build I think it's the opposite.

Anyways, that brings me to sunscreens. Just like with everything else out there, sunscreens can have some pretty funky ingredients that I know I don’t want being absorbed into my skin.

When Todd and I went to the Green Festival in April one of the things I picked up was sunscreen from Elemental Herbs.

Here’s the list of ingredients on the back of the bottle:

Active – zinc oxide
Inactive – spring water, organic green tea leaves and organic rose hips infused in organic extra virgin olive oil, organic jojoba oil, vegetable glycerin, fair trade shea butter, iron oxide, vegetable emulsifying wax, vitamin E

Nothing hinky or toxic in it. It’s also biodegradable and made in the U.S.A.

If you want to find out what other sunscreens don’t contain any harmful ingredients head over to the Environmental Working Group web site. They recently released their 4th annual sunscreen report and only 39 of the 500 sunscreens they tried passed their test. Not surprisingly (sadly), there were “natural” sunscreens that weren’t nearly as good for you as they claim.

One of those not so natural ingredients is oxybenzone, which can cause allergic reactions as well as developmental and reproductive toxicity. On the Skin Deep cosmetic safety database web site where they rate ingredients from 0-10 (10 being the worst) oxybenzone got a 9, not good. If you have "natural" sunscreens, or any sunscreen for that matter, I highly recommend going to this site and checking out the ingredients.

Our skin is our largest organ and absorbs 60% of what we put on it. So what we put on our skin will end up inside us. But those toxic ingredients don’t just end up in us, they also wash off into the pools, oceans and lakes that we’re swimming in. So we’re not only polluting ourselves but everything around us.

Whoa, ok, that got a little dramatic, but you get you point.

So while I was on Skin Deep I decided to look up zinc oxide and it turns out it’s a 4 on their not good meter. And after a little searching I found that Elemental Herbs sport sunscreen (the one I have) got an overall rating of 2 (out of 10), which is the same as all the other sunscreens that they list on their “Best Sunscreens” page. It didn’t seem right to go back and edit what I had written, it felt like it would be cheating or something.

All of the top sunscreens that the EWG recommends contain either zinc or titanium oxide, neither of which are perfect but also aren’t hormone disruptors. So I think I’ll still stick with my earlier statement of “no hinky or toxic” ingredients. For me zinc still seems like a better alternative to the other more toxic ingredients out there and it’s definitely better then getting burned.

The other issue I know some people have with sunscreen, besides the ingredients, is that it blocks vitamin D. Vitamin D is important and we do need it, but this post has already gone on long enough so I guess that will just have to wait for another day.

Hey, I need to make sure you're going to come back right? ;)