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Natural sunscreens don’t work that well
Recent news reports and Twitter feeds are full of complaints about The Honest Company’s SPF 30 sunscreen—a product that gets its broad spectrum sun protection from the mineral zinc oxide—with users saying they still got burned when using it.
While Consumer Reports hasn’t tested The Honest Company’s product, we have, over the years, looked at many natural sunscreens—those that contain only the minerals zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, or both. (The Honest Company was co-founded by actress Jessica Alba.) And our results show that while natural sunscreens—also called mineral sunscreens—offer some protection, they don’t perform as well as those that contain chemicals, such as avobenzone.
A broad spectrum sunscreen protects against both the sun’s UVA and UVB rays. UVA rays are those that penetrate deeply into skin, contributing to aging and skin cancer. UVB are the burning rays, and SPF refers to a sunscreen’s ability to shield your skin from those.
Check our sunscreen Ratings to find the products that came out on top in our tests and check our guide to staying safe in the sun.
Two years ago, we gave just one of the natural sunscreens we tested a Very Good rating for UVA and a different one a Very Good rating for UVB. Good was the highest rating for a mineral sunscreen for both UVA and UVB last year. The growing popularity of natural sunscreens led us to test several this year. Our results weren’t much better than in the past: Of the five natural sunscreens for the body we tested, three rated Excellent for UVA—but the same three received Fair ratings for UVB. When it came to SPF, only two met their claims—with the others seriously missing the mark.
One likely reason natural sunscreens routinely score so poorly: To provide good protection, sunscreens need to form a uniform film on the skin, explains David C. Steinberg, president of Steinberg & Associates, a personal-care-products consulting company in Plainsboro, N.J. And even though most mineral products contain micronized titanium dioxide, zinc oxide, or both, they’re still particles—so they don’t create a smooth, uniform surface.
Aren’t natural sunscreens safer? Some people think so because they sit on the surface of the skin and aren’t absorbed the way chemical sunscreens are. But natural sunscreens that go on clear—as many do these days—may contain nanoparticles, which may be absorbed. (According to the label, the zinc oxide used in The Honest Company sunscreen is non-nano.) The truth is, there are safety concerns with many active sunscreen ingredients—chemical and mineral. The science to rank them in order of safety isn’t there, but it is clear that the risks don’t outweigh the benefits of using sunscreen.
—Consumer Reports
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