7 ms·
European sunscreens are safer than American (2024)
- stefantalpalaru 4mo ago[dead]
- alistairSH 4mo agoThis has been true for a while. Sadly.
- isoprophlex 4mo agoCan't the free market just make this problem go away?
- pseidemann 4mo agoYou seem to be unaware of the asymmetry of information and competence. This is why consumer protection exists.
- jliptzin 4mo agoExisted*
- culi 4mo agoWhat specific consumer protections are you referencing?
- pseidemann 4mo agoThe FDA's purpose is protection of the public health. Drug approval would be one specific example. The SCCS (EU) evaluating UV filter safety is another.
- 1shooner 4mo agoConsider the potential for economic growth in private testing services. It's called job creation!
- petre 4mo agoIt could, but everybody got an orange tan afterwards.
- hinata08 4mo agoIf it's straightforward to approve new cosmetics, REACH, Cosmetic Products Regulation 1223/2009 updated no latter than this year in regulation 2026/78, ISO 22716 and whatnot still apply You can find lists of ingredients banned in cosmetics in the EU, or across EVERY industry in general Perfume manufacturers are the only ones who get away with virtually everything as they don't have to declare their ingredients (but "perfumes" are also an ingredient in a bunch of cosmetics, so here is the loophole as Europe always has loopholes)
- anon7000 4mo agoOh yeah, the free market is great at burying problems so consumers remain in the dark.
- abc123abc123 4mo agoIt already has. That is why you are reading this right now.
- Pragmata 4mo agoSeems like the free market does make this problem go away. This is simply one of the (few) instances where there is a freer market in the EU that in the US >In the European Union, sunscreens are regulated as cosmetics, which means greater flexibility in approving active ingredients. In the U.S., sunscreens are regulated as drugs, which means getting new ingredients approved is an expensive and time-consuming process. Because they’re treated as cosmetics, European-made sunscreens can draw on a wider variety of ingredients that protect better and are also less oily, less chalky and last longer. You should take this as an opportunity to reflect on the amount of lives lost as a result of the regulations in place for drugs, in both the EU and US. If the negative effect is this obvious in sunscreen, just imagine how much more impactful removing regulation on cancer drugs would be.
- DangitBobby 4mo agoThe flipside of this is that companies put dangerous chemicals into food, cookware, etc. Not convinced things would be better on net.
- Pragmata 4mo agoExcept you can check the differences easily. China doesn't have the same strict regulations, and yet when we compare life expectancy the difference isn't particularly big. Thought terminating cliches like "Better safe than sorry" simply don't stand up to scrutiny once you actually check the numbers. No, eating brasilian beef isn't going to kill you, and stopping imports from there is going to do a whole lot more to make you poorer than it will help your health. Take a walk, that will help you a whole lot more, and won't make you poorer.
- filterfish 4mo agoLife expectancy and quality of life are very different things.
- lazide 4mo agoLol. There are so many confounding variables and long-delay influences, it’s nearly impossible to compare. Prior generation Chinese tended to eat much less than any generation Americans, which has a proven positive effect on longevity. Older generation Chinese also tended to (might still?) smoke like chimneys, which has a proven negative effect on longevity. Older generation Chinese also lived through some crazy ‘population bottleneck’ events like the Great Leap Forward, which can cause very odd one time and unpredictable long term effects on longevity. China started and enforced their one child policy early on, which has very weird population distribution effects, which will also have weird influences on longevity for everyone (due to excess or lacking societal support, etc). They have also (relatively recently) been exposed to a wide variety of industrial chemicals, artificial fertilizers and pollutants. Americans have had rapidly shifting food sources, pervasive but changing exposure to pesticides and artificial fertilizers, a massive shift from rural to urban to sedentary knowledge work, and widely shifting stress factors across a wide variety of areas. And a rather unique ability to spend massive amounts of time in commutes and automobiles. This is also offset in time; and quantitatively different than Chinese have experienced.
- QGQBGdeZREunxLe 4mo agoDidn't the FDA clear new ingredients this week? https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/09/well/fda-sunscreen-bemotrizinol-approval.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/09/well/fda-sunscreen-bemotr...
- iluvcommunism 4mo ago[dead]
- hinata08 4mo agoOP's article is from 2024, according to the date on it
- RC_ITR 4mo agoI think a lot of us HN-types are people who like to post riddles like this instead of news about what actually happened.
- lazide 4mo agoDoes that make them safer?
- ChrisArchitect 4mo ago(2024) More recently: FDA Expands Sunscreen Options for the First Time in 20 Years to Add Bemotrizinol https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-expands-sunscreen-options-first-time-20-years https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-expa... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48466007 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48466007)
- wahnfrieden 4mo agoJapanese ones are also much better. I like Anessa Milk, it also doesn't stain as bad as some others.
- vrganj 4mo ago> A peer-approval system would work both ways. Europe would also take into account FDA decisions This doesn't seem like a given at all. Just because the FDA accepts EMA approvals wouldn't mean the EMA would accept FDA ones and as a European, I wouldn't want it to. I have a lot more trust in the EMA than the FDA.
- delusional 4mo agoPeer approval schemes are usually implemented as trade efficiency measures. A one sided peer approval would make it easier to import, while not making it easier to export, causing a delta trade deficit.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- nutjob2 4mo agoThat how you end up with chlorinated chicken you'd never knowingly eat. Obviously any authority that takes its job seriously makes decisions based on facts and not blind trust.
- malfist 4mo agoWhy is a trade deficit something to worry about? After all, my local grocery store buys nothing from me, but we both benefit from the exchange of goods and currency.
- virissimo 4mo agoFurthermore, even if the trade deficit was something to worry about, why should the food and drug safety bureaucracies be the ones to determine that kind of economic policy?
- ImPostingOnHN 4mo agoThat's a problem for the country with insufficient approval schemes to deal with, especially if they're also doing more work out of spite. For a country which has a sufficient approval scheme, they lose little by choosing not to trusting an insufficient approval scheme.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- jamesbelchamber 4mo ago> Not at all. In fact, American sunscreens may be less safe. Are they less safe, or _may_ they be less safe? The distinction is important, and I'm wary of overexcited editors "upgrading" titles for clicks. (This is a comment on the veracity of the title claim only - I'm British, I have no skin in this game)
- layer8 4mo ago> I have no skin in this game You literally have if you use sunscreen. ;)
- bethekidyouwant 4mo agoHe just said he’s British
- electronsoup 4mo agoThey didn't say they had never traveled south though
- ItsYan 4mo agoIt's day light, not sun light. You can easily burn on a cloudy day.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- grey-area 4mo agoBritain conforms with EU regulations on sunscreen, as with almost everything else.
- stogot 4mo agoMaybe one day they will join the union
- dynm 4mo agoThe FDA did (3 days ago!) finally approve a new ingredient: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-expands-sunscreen-options-first-time-20-years https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-expa... My personal hot take is that we should all be using zinc (or titanium) oxide sunscreen which AFAICT maxes out both effectiveness and chemical safety. (And is the best for the fish?) Interestingly, these are the only ingredients that the FDA currently deems both safe and effective.
- Semaphor 4mo agoMy wife is black and has sensitive skin. She once tried zinc oxide sunscreen. If one wants to be protected from the sun while cosplaying as purple monster, it's a great choice.
- apt-apt-apt-apt 4mo agoI'm light-skin and look like a ghost with Blue Lizard. I can't imagine how ridiculous it must look on dark skin.
- culi 4mo agoThis truly is the biggest drawbacks. It's almost impossible to make zinc sunscreen see-through. One technique is to micronize the zinc but this comes with its own set of risks including skin penetration and environmental risks that micronized zinc can pose to aquatic life. I think the only solution is to embrace it. There isn't really a 100% safe sunscreen that is also invisible
- jerlam 4mo agoSunscreens that use zinc/titanium dioxide as active ingredients are often so unpleasant to use that people don't apply enough of them or refuse to use them. The "nicer" sunscreens that use these ingredients often sneak in SPF boosters which are actually derivatives of other chemical sunscreens but are treated differently on the ingredients label, pretty much cheating the system. SPF boosters: https://labmuffin.com/100-mineral-sunscreens-using-unregulated-chemical-filters/ https://labmuffin.com/100-mineral-sunscreens-using-unregulat... The coral-safe sunscreen claims don't have a lot of evidence behind them: https://labmuffin.com/is-your-sunscreen-killing-coral-the-science-with-video/ https://labmuffin.com/is-your-sunscreen-killing-coral-the-sc...
- stymaar 4mo agoI've no opinion whatsoever on the topic, but why can't economists refrain from writing opinion pieces in newspaper about topics they have no qualification on? I'm sure there's enough dermatologists and pharmaceutical engineers to give their informed opinion on such a topic, instead of having economists speaking as everythingologists on every damn subject… (I know why they do that, the author is merely a polical activist, but I wish editors would just close the door to such pieces).
- culi 4mo agoFrankly, the field of dermatology is so captured by corporations that my confidence is hardly raised when I see a degree in that field. Is there a term for regulatory capture but for academia? Like "academic capture"?
- culi 4mo agoI'd say dermatology, nutrition/dietetics, and phytopathology are 3 of the worst fields in this regard. I don't think we're fully over the sugar lobby's stranglehold on relevant science and I think the glyphosate lobby's hold is even stronger than that was. How many times are we gonna go through these crises and not reform the way we do and fund science?
- OptionOfT 4mo agoSidenote: this phenomenon is known as the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.
- culi 4mo agoMaybe more relevant is "Engineer syndrome" — the tendency of technically minded individuals to assume that their expertise in one area makes them an authority on everything See also Nobel Disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease I think the problem overall is just that we live in a society that conditions us to get validation from the size of our paychecks. Software engineers get a fat paycheck and think "well I must be really smart. Why else would society compensate me like this?". I'm sure it's a problem in all sorts of highly-paid fields. I'm always shocked by how many physicians I see write massively ambitious, terribly researched generalizations (see Jared Diamond and the experts in relevant fields that will spend the rest of their lives dispelling myths he spread)
- retired 4mo agoFrom what I read in the article, American sunscreen has more stringent regulation because it is qualified as drugs, which has higher standards, thus making American sunscreen safer (but less efficient).
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- Steltek 4mo agoYeah, the article is contradiction with itself. US has higher standards, restricting what can be sold but then also states, "In fact, many U.S. sunscreens would fail European standards for UVA protection." So which is it?
- girvo 4mo agoBoth? I mean both can be true.
- sholladay 4mo agoIf sunscreen is supposed to provide specific health benefits, namely to reduce cancer risk, then it is a drug, not a cosmetic. Regulations should ensure it provides the intended effect without undue harm. Cosmetics are given more leeway because they are, in principle, neutral from a medical perspective. Why would you want to treat a cancer related product like that? Saving upfront time and money, at the risk of having to spend a lot more time and money later in healthcare, is not a good reason. If anything, we might head the opposite direction. Some people think we should start regulating dietary supplements as drugs rather than food.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- guhidalg 4mo agoFDA does regulate cosmetics components, and FTC regulates what claims they can make. It’s hard to make a binary decision that one thing is a drug and something else isn’t. You can appreciate there is a spectrum of side effects with moisturizer and sunblock on one end, supplements in the middle, and chemotherapy drugs on the other end. Personally, I think that Americans simply don’t treat skin cancer as seriously as they should, and so the market has not provided more choices.
- alistairSH 4mo agoSure, but that doesn’t excuse the FDA from slow-rolling/blocking new ingredients that should be better. As noted in the article, the sunscreens available here would not pass muster in the EU despite supposedly less stringent rules.
- tristor 4mo agoThis article never actually says which chemicals are being used in these sunscreens that are supposedly better/safer, but basically there are only two groups of effective active ingredients for sunscreen: zinc or titanium oxide (minerals) or benzene/petroleum derivatives. The problem with the latter is they absorb through the skin and are carcinogenic, although the research shows they're better than mineral-based sunscreen at blocking UV across a wider spectrum and therefore the offset in skin cancer rate is more than the cancer risk from absorption. Meanwhile good old zinc oxide has basically no downsides except that it doesn't look pretty and you have to reapply it often if you're swimming or sweating, and if you reapply often enough it's nearly as effective as benzene-based sunscreens. The "better" EU sunscreens and also those in Korean/Japanese products, in my experience are using benzene derived chemicals. I'll stick to zinc oxide, thanks.
- horizion2025 4mo agoWrong there are plenty of other ingredients. In fact one of those ingredients that is permitted in EU and not US is ecamsule. It is quite nice, it absorbs the UV photons by switching confirmation (different isomere) rather than being oxidised into ROS/free radicals as many other ingredients do.
- tristor 4mo agoEcamsule is interesting but unfortunately only blocks a very narrow wavelength of UVA, which means it has to be mixed with other chemicals which are usually the benzene derivatives I mention. It's also water-soluble so very difficult to make it waterproof. Materials science is hard, and it's even harder when it comes to things we put in and on our bodies, which is why we shouldn't sensationalize the benefits of new chemicals without acknowledging their downsides, especially when we have found something that works exceptionally well, is cheap, and is merely cosmetically challenging (zinc oxide).
- horizion2025 4mo agoBtw titanium dioxide is now a suspected carcinogenic. It is illegal in food in the EU now.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- hintymad 4mo agoDid anyone feel that food in Europe and Japan are fresher and more safe? Many of my friends anecdotally felt that they felt better after eating in Japan or Europe than in the US.
- mike_hock 4mo agoEuropean sunscreens are less regulated than American sunscreens and are thus safer because they can draw from a wider array of ingredients. American food is less regulated than European food and is thus less safe because it can draw from a wider array of ingredients. Wait.
- AnimalMuppet 4mo agoSunscreen can be unsafe in that the ingredients poison you. Or it can be unsafe in that it fails to screen the sun's harmful UV. More ingredients to choose from means that it can be safer at screening UV. But...
- netsharc 4mo agoImagine if car regulations specified what can be in a car. "You want seatbelts, airbags, ABS? Bureaucracy says not allowed! There's a lengthy review process!"
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 4mo agoThe correct statement in the US would be: You want seatbelts, airbags, ABS? You have to pay a $1000 monthly fee. Sorry, I couldn't resist