HikeArizona.COM

Thought this was worth posting here since I'm guessing that most participants here are heavy sunblock users.

An independent testing lab found trace amounts of benzene in a number of sunblock and sun aftercare products. The source is unknown, but is assumed to be contamination during the manufacturing process. Keep in mind that no amount of benzene is "safe" and the FDA only allows it in products where there is no alternative and the product with benzene is medically beneficial. Sunblock / Sunscreen doesn't fall into this category.

https://www.valisure.com/blog/valisure- ... sunscreen/

The petition lists the 78 products which were found to contain benzene. There's an additional list which details the products with no trace found. Sadly my go-to sunscreen was near the top of the list of those with benzene contamination.

@andrewp Sadly, there is no life without risk, and we’re all gonna die of something one day.

@chumley


Sure, but if given the choice between a product laced with benzine due to poor manufacturing process and one without I'll take the one without. If, for some reason, that's not living life to its fullest then I guess I'm missing out.

Appreciate posting this, but given the randomness of distribution (e.g. the same brand can either contain it or not) one wonders how good their lists are with predicting past and future contamination. It seems more likely the contamination is coming from their supplier where they use a mix of suppliers and produce a mix of products. Especially with 2021 being the year of "being flexible with supplier being late" due to the global shipping crisis, it is easy to imagine them mixing and matching.

As an aside...I didn't realize that sunscreen is partially made of fish products.

Seems like sprays with an spf of 50 or above were more likely to have benzene. Mineral based lotions/creams seemed to be less likely. There were exceptions, but I think mineral based is typically the safer option.

Benzene has been found in hand sanitizers, which I have always avoided like the plague, but have been shoved at us in recent years, especially the past year. You’re exposed to benzene every time you put gas in your vehicle.

Nearly everything or every activity we are exposed to has some risk, and sometimes you trade one risk for another. It’s good to see the list of these sunblocks, and maybe make a different choice, although my preferred sunblock was not on the bad guy list. I am around benzene and toluene quite often, and I know those exposures far exceed anything in sunblock, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.

@nonot

Agreed and it is difficult to make a purchase decision as there is no clear-cut delineation or pattern between the products that are contaminated and not. The real question comes down to the source of the contamination. It's unlikely that all of these companies manufacture their own product so there could be an issue with one production facility that supplies a number of brands. It could also come down to a raw ingredient that is shared by a number of brands at one or more production facilities.

In my case I have been using the Neutrogena Beach Defense sprays since last year and almost all of the variants of those products are on the contaminated list. I'm not going to risk it. In my case I decided to pick a product from a brand with enough variants that having all of them on the "good" list would suggest some amount of distance from the root cause of the contamination. I ended up choosing one of the Hawaiian Tropic sprays based on none of that brand's products showing any contamination which was somewhat unique in all of the products tested.

LindaAnn wrote:Seems like sprays with an spf of 50 or above were more likely to have benzene. Mineral based lotions/creams seemed to be less likely. There were exceptions, but I think mineral based is typically the safer option.

I noticed the same thing, which was something of a relief. The mineral-based lotions I use emphasize my waxy pallor, so maybe cancer will pass me by, tricked into thinking I'm already dead.

I think my hat is benzene free. There will probably be a study in a few years that informs us that’s not accurate either.

Interesting. So the science tells us to rub some cream on our skin to keep from getting cancer. but now it turns that the science's cream also causes cancer. I wonder which is worse: the cancer from the sun or the cancer from the science?

You must have a chip on your shoulder, maybe some scientist stole your high school sweetheart? It is not science that put the benzene there, that is just poor quality control.

This thread uses the terms Benzine and Benzene. Note: they are not the same thing. Benzene is a hydrocarbon molecule (C6H6), Benzine is a mixture of hydrocarbons.

The study is a finding of benzene (not benzine). Googling suggests that benzene will rapidly evaporate into the air, but maybe the concern is that if you breath in a whiff of it while it is doing so, that is when the bad stuff happens? Is there a chemist in the house?