Key West Sunscreen Ban?

The Key West City Commission on Tuesday unanimously voted to ban the sale of sunscreens that contain two ingredients — oxybenzone and octinoxate — that a growing body of scientific evidence says harm coral reefs. “This ordinance is just one other thing we can do to help improve and protect our water quality,” said Mill McCleary, of the nonprofit environmental protection group Reef Relief.

The measure, which passed 7-0, isn’t law yet, though. The commission must review it a second time and pass the measure again before it would become law. The second vote is scheduled for Feb. 5.

Environmental researchers have published studies showing how these two ingredients, which accumulate in the water from bathers or from wastewater discharges, can damage coral reefs through bleaching and harming the corals’ DNA. In some instances, the corals can die.
Last year, Hawaii banned the sale or distribution of any sunscreens containing oxybenzone and octinoxate, a measure that will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2021. It was the first state in the nation to implement such a ban.

In Florida, the website for the South Florida Reef Ambassador Initiative, which falls under the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, tells divers to “Avoid sunscreens with Oxybenzone and Avobenzone. The benzones are compounds that are lethal to coral reproduction in very small amounts.”

The Trouble with Ingredients in Sunscreens

Sunscreen is a unique body care product: consumers are directed to apply a thick coat over large areas of the body and reapply frequently. Thus, ingredients in sunscreen should not be irritating or cause skin allergies, and should be able to withstand powerful UV radiation without losing their effectiveness or forming potentially harmful breakdown products. People can potentially inhale ingredients in sunscreen sprays and ingest some of the ingredients they apply to their lips, so ingredients must not be harmful to lungs or internal organs. Further, sunscreens commonly include ingredients that act as “penetration enhancers” and help the product adhere to skin. As a result, many sunscreen chemicals are absorbed into the body and can be measured in blood, breast milk and urine samples.

Active ingredients in sunscreens come in two forms, mineral and chemical filters. Each uses a different mechanism for protecting skin and maintain stability in sunlight. The most common sunscreens on the market contain chemical filters. These products typically include a combination of two to 6 of the following active ingredients: oxybenzone, avobenzone, octisalate, octocrylene, homosulfate and octinoxate. Mineral sunscreens use zinc oxide and/or titanium dioxide. A handful of products combine zinc oxide with chemical filters.

Laboratory studies indicate that some chemical UV filters may mimic hormones, and physicians report sunscreen-related skin allergies, which raises important questions about unintended human health consequences from frequent sunscreen application.

The Food and Drug Administration has not reviewed evidence of potential hazards of sunscreen filters – instead it grandfathered in ingredients used in the late 1970s when it began to consider sunscreen safety. The Danish EPA recently reviewed the safety of active ingredients in sunscreen and concluded that most ingredients lacked information to ensure their safety (Danish EPA 2015). Sixteen of the 19 ingredients studied had no information about their potential to cause cancer. And while the published studies suggest that several chemical filters interact with human sex or thyroid hormones, none of the ingredients had sufficient information to determine the potential risks to humans from hormone disruption.

EWG has reviewed the existing data about human exposure and toxicity for the nine most commonly used sunscreen chemicals. The most worrisome is oxybenzone, which was added to nearly 65 percent of the non-mineral sunscreens in EWG’s 2018 sunscreen database. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention routinely detects oxybenzone in more than 96% of the American population. In a recent evaluation of CDC-collected exposure data for American children, researchers found that adolescent boys with higher oxybenzone measurements had significantly lower total testosterone levels. Three other studies reported statistically significant associations between oxybenzone exposure during pregnancy and birth outcomes.

Wisdom Wednesday: Sunscreens

I have just finished three months of intense lab review. From December through February, we reduce out lab fees to encourage our patients to perform yearly blood and urine analysis. This year the response was great and I’ve been looking a test results night and day.

For the past few years testing vitamin D levels has been standard practice in my office. Initially I was shocked at the number of patients we found that were deficient in vitamin D. After all, I practice in South Florida where the sun shines about 362 days a year.

In Michigan the deficiency is from the lack of sun, in Florida, we hide from the sun. We wear protective clothing, avoid the noon day sun and wear lots of sunscreen.

I don’t always wear sunscreen. If I have a tennis match at 8 AM or run the beach early in the morning, I want that sunlight striking my skin converting cholesterol to vitamin D3.

However, if I am going out on the boat or any outdoor activity during the late morning or afternoon, I want protection from the UVA and UVB rays.

My preference is clothing. I wear a hat with a wide brim and a long sleeved shirt with a rated SPF (sun protection factor). That lets me avoid all those chemicals on my skin.

For my face and hands or any other exposed skin I have to use sunscreen.

There are two basic types of sunscreen – physical and chemical. Physical sunscreens generally contain titanium dioxide or zinc oxide. They sit on top of your skin to deflect UV rays from penetrating and doing damage. They are often thicker, greasy, and less comfortable. They need total coverage in order for form a shield from the sun. But they last a long time and continue to protect as long as they sit on top of your skin.

Can Coffee Protect You From Melanoma?

Coffee drinkers are less likely to suffer from malignant melanoma, and their risk decreases somewhat with every cup they swallow, according to findings published January 20th in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

“We found that four or more cups of coffee per day was associated with about a 20% reduced risk of malignant melanoma,” said lead author Erikka Loftfield, a doctoral student at Yale University School of Public Health who is completing her dissertation work at the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

Previous research has shown that coffee drinking could protect against less deadly forms of skin cancer, apparently by mitigating the damage to skin cells caused by the sun’s ultraviolet rays, the researchers said in background notes.

They decided to see if this protection extended to melanoma, the leading cause of skin cancer death in the United States and the 5th most common cancer. In 2013, there were an estimated 77,000 new cases of melanoma and about 9,500 deaths from the cancer, according to the study.

They found that people who drank the most coffee every day enjoyed a lower risk of melanoma, compared with those who drank little or no coffee. There was also a trend toward more protection with higher intake. People who drank one to three cups a day had about a 10% decreased risk of melanoma compared with those who drank none at all, while those who drank four or more cups had a 20% decreased risk.

The study only uncovered an association between coffee consumption and melanoma risk; it didn’t prove a cause-and-effect relationship.