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Remember the outrage last year when some sunscreen was found to have few PPM of benzene? The outrage from that FUD and people stopping use of sunscreen altoget

Remember the outrage last year when some sunscreen was found to have few PPM of benzene? The outrage from that FUD and people stopping use of sunscreen altogether likely caused more damage than benzene itself.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
Nah, sunscreens are way more harmful than sun exposure itself. It's the sunscreen that will cause the cancer eventually. Here's the chain of events: young patient gets bad sunburn, sees doctor. Doctor sympathizes and warns patient of dire consequences of not using sunblock 100% of the time. Patient agrees and mostly uses sunblock for several decades, forgets a few times and gets more sunburns. In fact, patient is way more likely to be exposed to powerful sunlight because of the invincibility conferred by sunblock. Patient gets cancer from substances in sunblock, and feels terribly guilty for not using it because a few sunburns must have given her skin cancer.
- EatingWithForks 3y ago
  The chain of events doesn't form a causal relationship that substances in sunblock cause cancer. It just expresses someone might use sunblock more often after the advice from a doctor.
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    Yes; very self-serving recommendation, isn't it?
    - EatingWithForks 3y ago
      No, In mean quite literally the described situation does not have anything to do with whether or not sunblock itself causes cancer. Like a whole paragraph of scenario was provided and then out of nowhere "and then they get cancer from chemicals in sunblock". Which chemicals, specifically? What do we do about the fact that nearly all women are recommended sunblock daily in nearly all beauty regimens for decades and yet facial skin cancers aren't gendered?
    - dzhiurgis 3y ago
      Replying to EatingWithForks > facial skin cancers aren't gendered? So that also means sunscreen doesn't work either?
- tkanarsky 3y ago
  Is this claim substantiated? I've seen all sorts of opinions ranging from "use European sunscreens containing non-FDA-approved UVA filters" to "just rub lard on skin, drink raw milk, and lift heavy weights". I feel like chemical sunscreens have been ubiquitous enough for long enough that any correlation in skin cancer rates would have been long pointed out by now.
  - arrosenberg 3y ago
    No, they are an idiot. UV light causes various mutations at the DNA level, which accumulate over time and can lead to skin cancer. Skin cancers have some of the highest number of mutations of any form of cancer.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - joker_minmax 3y ago
    I can't testify as to Sunscreen, but I can verify the UV thing first hand: my aunt who went to the tanning bed multiple times per week got skin cancer so severe they had to remove a golf ball size piece of flesh from her leg.
  - fransje26 3y ago
    There are recent studies going somewhat in that direction. The gist was more or less as follows: - the chemical compounds in sunscreens often break down into potentially toxic/cancer inducing compounds under UV light. YMMV per sunscreen. - metals can be used as UV blocks, and are absorbed by the skin, with potential health risks attached. - the proportion of melanomas in the population groups NOT using sunscreen was indeed higher than in the population groups using sunscreen. HOWEVER,the groups using sunscreen had a prevalence of aggressive melanoma, while the groups not using sunscreen were predominantly diagnosed with the least-aggressive type of melanoma.
- AbrahamParangi 3y ago
  You know, things have gotten too easy. In eliminating all the natural problems of the world with abundant food, clean water, medicine, electricity it seems that we can no longer discern cure from disease. It’s like the vaccine situation. Are vaccines bad for you? Probably a little bit, some of the time. But boy! The horrors of those diseases the vaccines prevent! You do not have to look quite so hard. In some places infant mortality was 30%. Nowadays, 1 in 3 parents are not left grieving before their child reaches 1 and so we forget why we vaccinate our children.
nostrebored 3y ago
The outrage was that 1. Sunscreen has chemicals which bioaccumulate with use and 2. No testing had been done on sunscreen as it was assumed that it was safe as a topical medication. Combine that with the fact that sunscreen has not been shown to cause any population wide reduction in skin cancer prevalence and endemic vitamin D deficiency. I think that people have a right to be mad?
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Do people really wear sunscreen for cancer prevention and to get more vitamin D? I would imagine it's more about preventing painful ass burns (place hyphen as you wish) and blocking UV skin damage that accelerates aging.
  - loeg 3y ago
    Yes, there are people concerned about skin cancer. For an anecdote, my uncle had skin cancer three times and became very conservative about always wearing hats and sunscreen.
  - EdwardDiego 3y ago
    In the Southern Hemisphere (especially the Anglosphere countries due to our heritage of pasty white people), it's to prevent sunburn and especially cancer. Yeah, sunburn sucks, but thanks to the ozone hole that forms over Antarctica and then drifts northwards, melanoma is very high. And so is the sunburn risk, you can burn in 10 minutes here, but repeated sunburn increases melanoma risk.
    - lostlogin 3y ago
      It’s seriously grim at times - the burn time drops to 5-10 minutes and you want to mow the lawn. Suncream stinging your eyes you get it done. And you still get burnt, even with it on. Car paint fades fast and everything plastic or fabric gets destroyed by UV in a year or so.
      - 3y ago
hulitu 3y ago
There is a lot of food which can contain benzene. Because it contains sodium benzoate that in some conditions leads to benzene. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_benzoate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_benzoate

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

Nah, sunscreens are way more harmful than sun exposure itself. It's the sunscreen that will cause the cancer eventually. Here's the chain of events: young patient gets bad sunburn, sees doctor. Doctor sympathizes and warns patient of dire consequences of not using sunblock 100% of the time. Patient agrees and mostly uses sunblock for several decades, forgets a few times and gets more sunburns. In fact, patient is way more likely to be exposed to powerful sunlight because of the invincibility conferred by sunblock. Patient gets cancer from substances in sunblock, and feels terribly guilty for not using it because a few sunburns must have given her skin cancer.

EatingWithForks 3y ago
The chain of events doesn't form a causal relationship that substances in sunblock cause cancer. It just expresses someone might use sunblock more often after the advice from a doctor.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  Yes; very self-serving recommendation, isn't it?
  - EatingWithForks 3y ago
    No, In mean quite literally the described situation does not have anything to do with whether or not sunblock itself causes cancer. Like a whole paragraph of scenario was provided and then out of nowhere "and then they get cancer from chemicals in sunblock". Which chemicals, specifically? What do we do about the fact that nearly all women are recommended sunblock daily in nearly all beauty regimens for decades and yet facial skin cancers aren't gendered?
  - dzhiurgis 3y ago
    Replying to EatingWithForks > facial skin cancers aren't gendered? So that also means sunscreen doesn't work either?
tkanarsky 3y ago
Is this claim substantiated? I've seen all sorts of opinions ranging from "use European sunscreens containing non-FDA-approved UVA filters" to "just rub lard on skin, drink raw milk, and lift heavy weights". I feel like chemical sunscreens have been ubiquitous enough for long enough that any correlation in skin cancer rates would have been long pointed out by now.
- arrosenberg 3y ago
  No, they are an idiot. UV light causes various mutations at the DNA level, which accumulate over time and can lead to skin cancer. Skin cancers have some of the highest number of mutations of any form of cancer.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- joker_minmax 3y ago
  I can't testify as to Sunscreen, but I can verify the UV thing first hand: my aunt who went to the tanning bed multiple times per week got skin cancer so severe they had to remove a golf ball size piece of flesh from her leg.
- fransje26 3y ago
  There are recent studies going somewhat in that direction. The gist was more or less as follows: - the chemical compounds in sunscreens often break down into potentially toxic/cancer inducing compounds under UV light. YMMV per sunscreen. - metals can be used as UV blocks, and are absorbed by the skin, with potential health risks attached. - the proportion of melanomas in the population groups NOT using sunscreen was indeed higher than in the population groups using sunscreen. HOWEVER,the groups using sunscreen had a prevalence of aggressive melanoma, while the groups not using sunscreen were predominantly diagnosed with the least-aggressive type of melanoma.
AbrahamParangi 3y ago
You know, things have gotten too easy. In eliminating all the natural problems of the world with abundant food, clean water, medicine, electricity it seems that we can no longer discern cure from disease. It’s like the vaccine situation. Are vaccines bad for you? Probably a little bit, some of the time. But boy! The horrors of those diseases the vaccines prevent! You do not have to look quite so hard. In some places infant mortality was 30%. Nowadays, 1 in 3 parents are not left grieving before their child reaches 1 and so we forget why we vaccinate our children.

nostrebored 3y ago

The outrage was that 1. Sunscreen has chemicals which bioaccumulate with use and 2. No testing had been done on sunscreen as it was assumed that it was safe as a topical medication. Combine that with the fact that sunscreen has not been shown to cause any population wide reduction in skin cancer prevalence and endemic vitamin D deficiency. I think that people have a right to be mad?

moffkalast 3y ago
Do people really wear sunscreen for cancer prevention and to get more vitamin D? I would imagine it's more about preventing painful ass burns (place hyphen as you wish) and blocking UV skin damage that accelerates aging.
- loeg 3y ago
  Yes, there are people concerned about skin cancer. For an anecdote, my uncle had skin cancer three times and became very conservative about always wearing hats and sunscreen.
- EdwardDiego 3y ago
  In the Southern Hemisphere (especially the Anglosphere countries due to our heritage of pasty white people), it's to prevent sunburn and especially cancer. Yeah, sunburn sucks, but thanks to the ozone hole that forms over Antarctica and then drifts northwards, melanoma is very high. And so is the sunburn risk, you can burn in 10 minutes here, but repeated sunburn increases melanoma risk.
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    It’s seriously grim at times - the burn time drops to 5-10 minutes and you want to mow the lawn. Suncream stinging your eyes you get it done. And you still get burnt, even with it on. Car paint fades fast and everything plastic or fabric gets destroyed by UV in a year or so.
    - 3y ago

hulitu 3y ago

There is a lot of food which can contain benzene. Because it contains sodium benzoate that in some conditions leads to benzene. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_benzoate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_benzoate