It is a well established fact that whatever you put in your skin, will go in!
This means that anything applied to the skin will be absorbed into the blood stream. If it is a toxin, it will have to be processed by the liver and excreted in the urine or feces. If the toxic burden is too much, the body will end up storing the toxin in fatty tissues, including the brain and central nervous system.
The most common sunscreens contain chemical filters. These products typically include a combination of two to six of the following active ingredients: oxybenzone, avobenzone, octisalate, octocrylene, homosalate and octinoxate. Mineral sunscreens use zinc oxide and/or titanium dioxide. A handful of products combine zinc oxide with chemical filters.
The 12 most common ingredients used in sunscreen are, oxybenzone, octinoxate, octisalate, octocrylene, homosalate and avobenzone.
Sadly, when the FDA began to consider sunscreen safety, it grandfathered active ingredients from the late 1970s in without reviewing the evidence of their potential hazards. In February 2019, the agency released its final draft sunscreens monograph, which contains insufficient health and safety data to designate 12 of the 16 sunscreen filters allowed for use in the U.S. as “generally recognized as safe and effective,” or GRASE.
In 2019 and 2020, the FDA published two studies showing that the ingredients oxybenzone, octinoxate, octisalate, octocrylene, homosalate and avobenzone are all systemically absorbed into the body after a single use (Matta 2019, Matta 2020). The FDA also found that the sunscreen ingredients could be detected on the skin and in blood weeks after application ended (Matta 2020).
These findings are troubling, because they show that sunscreen chemicals are circulating in the blood, and the FDA has indicated that the agency does not have enough information to determine whether the chemicals are causing harm.
The 2019 proposal from the FDA also concluded that the risks of using aminobenzoic acid, or PABA, and trolamine salicylate outweigh their benefits, and it proposed classifying them as unsafe. The FDA-proposed monograph gave the GRASE designation to just two active sunscreen ingredients: zinc oxide and titanium dioxide.
The real issue is that these chemical not only circulate in the blood, but the also accumulate in the body. This simply adds to the toxic burden the body is dealing with, increasing the risk for cancer and other chronic inflammatory diseases.
A better solution should incorporate progressive exposure and dosing to sunlight, along with the use of natural oils such as Red Raspberry oil, which naturally has an SPF of 28-50, Carrot Seed oil with an SPF of 38-40 and Grapeseed oil, which has fantastic antioxidant properties to reduce skin damage from the sun. These can be combined with Coconut oil or Black Cumin Seed oil for an effective pre and post sun skin treatment. Gradually increasing the dosage to sun is really the key, though. The idea is to get just enough, without burning.