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Report Questions the Safety of Sunscreens
Monday, 09 March 2009 12:58
A comprehensive report on skinbiology.com titled 'The Chemical Sunscreen Health Disaster' is accusing the sunscreen industry of making products that may ultimately cause more skin damage than they prevent.
"For decades, irresponsible cosmetic companies and a small group of very vocal, publicity-seeking dermatologists have strongly advocated that chemical sunscreens should be heavily applied before any exposure to sunlight, even on young children. They insisted that such sunscreen use would prevent skin cancer and protect your health. This was despite of a lack of any adequate safety testing of these chemicals,” says the site.
“On the other hand, over the past decade, many scientists studying cancer have come to virtually the opposite conclusion; that is, the use of sunscreen chemicals may be increasing the incidence of cancer and that sunlight exposure may actually decrease human cancer rates and improve your health,” the report continues. “It now appears that many heavily-used chemical sunscreens may actually increase cancers by virtue of their free radical generating properties. And more insidiously, many commonly used sunscreen chemicals have strong estrogenic actions that may cause serious problems in sexual development and adult sexual function, and may further increase cancer risks.
“It is not that these compounds were ever viewed as benign substances. Organic chemists have been long aware of the dangers of compounds in chemical sunscreens. Such chemicals are widely used to start free radical reactions during chemical synthesis. These chemicals are the dangerous types that one carefully keeps away from your skin while working in a laboratory. To use them, you mix them into a combination of other chemicals, then flash the mixture with an ultraviolet light. The ultraviolet absorbing chemicals then generate copious amounts of free radicals that initiated the desired chemical reactions.”
The bottom line: sunscreen should be used as a tool to prevent sunburn whenever sunburn is a possibility, and should not be used on a daily basis in climates and seasons when sunburn is not possible. So use sunscreen to protect yourself from burning this vacation season, but make sure you allow some sun exposure here at home so that your body can produce an adequate amount of Vitamin D. Wearing SPF and/or makeup with SPF 24/7 can keep you from getting the Vitamin D you need to be healthy.
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