![]() About 2,400 sun-protection products contain the ingredient. “One potential hypothesis of how the benzene was introduced is that it came from the ethanol used in the manufacturing process.” Understanding the octocrylene and benzophenone connectionĪnother group recently came out with data about a different carcinogen in certain sunscreens, calling for the FDA to remove all sunscreens containing the active ingredient octocrylene from sale. “A safe level of benzene in sunscreen products doesn’t exist,” Dr. In the meantime, consumers can make sure none of those recalled products are in their homes, but beyond that, it’s hard to give advice about how to handle this news since it’s still not clear how benzene got into the products. The FDA is reportedly evaluating Valisure’s petition. CVS and other brands quietly took some of theirs off the shelves, too,” Dr. “The fact that J&J recalled their products validates the findings. The contaminated products came from a variety of companies, including Johnson & Johnson, which in late July of 2021, issued a voluntary recall of several sunscreens from its Aveeno and Neutrogena brands. “Since there was a batch-to-batch variability of the benzene levels in the products, that makes us think it’s a problem in the manufacturing process and the companies aren’t doing enough quality control,” he says. It’s important to emphasize that the affected products were contaminated with benzene, something that could have happened to any product and not just sunscreen, says Dr. The company petitioned the FDA, asking for a recall of the contaminated products, and requested that the FDA better define limits for benzene contamination in drug and cosmetic products. What’s perhaps most troubling is that it is not an intended ingredient in any sunscreen product or production process, which leaves many wondering how it got in there and how they can protect themselves if there is no way to know how and when it was introduced.Īccording to Valisure’s report, 27% of the tested samples-which included aerosol sprays and lotions-contained detectable levels of benzene, and some contained up to three times the conditionally restricted FDA concentration limit of 2 parts per million. Long-term exposure to inhaled benzene can cause leukemia. It is also used to make some types of lubricants, rubbers, dyes, detergents, drugs, and pesticides. It is a highly flammable chemical that is a natural part of crude oil, gasoline, and cigarette smoke and is used to make plastics, nylon, and synthetic products. ![]() Department of Health and Human Services, the World Health Organization, and other regulatory agencies. The FDA regulates sunscreen as a drug product and after-sun products as a cosmetic.īenzene is known to cause cancer in humans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Last May, Valisure, an independent quality assurance company in New Haven, Conn., detected high levels of benzene, a known human carcinogen, in 78 sunscreen and after-sun care products. ![]()
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