Make nano a no-no on your summer vacation!While you’re planning your summer vacation and thinking about what to pack, don’t forget the sunscreen -- but make sure it doesn’t have manufactured nanoparticles in it!
Nanosunscreens have the potential to cause serious human and environmental harm, but there is nothing stopping companies from selling them. Nevertheless, consumers are becoming more aware of this issue. This summer Friends of the Earth is encouraging you to become educated about the sunscreen products you use in order to avoid potentially toxic manufactured nanomaterials.
Update: Breakthrough in getting toxins out of comsetics!
In 2006, Friends of the Earth released a groundbreaking report, “Nanomaterials, Sunscreens and Cosmetics: Small Ingredients, Big Risks.” Since then, we’ve released updated reports every year, sharing more and more about these alarming risks, which could affect consumers, workers, and the environment. This year we have gathered further evidence indicating that nano should be a no-no.
Read our reports | Read our fact sheet | See a sample letter you can send to sunscreen companies | Read more about how nanosunscreens are still unlabelled and unregulated | More Bad News about Sunscreens: Nanoparticles (AOL News)
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* Please note that our Nanotechnology & Sunscreens report references company surveys taken in 2007, when we considered nanoscale ingredients to measure less than 100 nanometers. These company policies may be outdated. Contact a company directly to verify if it is still nano-free. Remeber to ask if its products contain ingredients measuring less than 300 nanometers. |
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"Manufactured nanomaterials" (also known as nanoparticles) are particles made to have extremely small dimensions in order to leverage the unique physical properties that chemicals can exhibit at the nanoscale. One nanometer (nm) is roughly 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Nanoparticles of titanium dioxide and zinc oxide now used in some sunscreens can measure 20 to 30 nm in size -- or even smaller in at least one dimension. The physical and chemical properties of these and other nanoscale materials, such as reactivity, persistence, or bioavailability, can differ significantly from their larger scale counterparts. Changes in properties like these can often result in unpredictable changes in toxicity that as of yet are not well understood.
Toxic properties in manufactured nanomaterials can be witnessed at scales up to 300 nm. Particles up to a few hundred nanometers in size share many of the novel biological behaviors of nanoparticles less than 100 nm in size, including high reactivity, bioactivity and bioavailability, increased influence of particle surface effects, strong particle surface adhesion and strong ability to bind proteins (Cedervall et al. 2007; Garnett and Kallinteri 2006; Linse et al. 2007). As with even smaller particles, particles less than 300 nm in size have the capacity to be taken into individual cells (Garnett and Kallinteri 2006).
Consumers need to know that manufactured nanoscale zinc and titanium oxides are not the only choice and are not necessarily the most effective or safest choice for sun protection. Added nanomaterials means unnecessary risking our health and the environment, with no significant gain. In 2007, Consumer Reports tested sunscreens containing nanomaterials and found no correlation between nanomaterial content and sun protection. Consumer Reports testing found neither nanoscale zinc nor titanium oxides provide a clear performance advantage over other active ingredients (though it’s not clear whether non-mineral, carbon-based formulations, are all nano-free). Another study, recently published in Nature Nanotechnology, also doubts the efficacy of nanosunscreens compared to sunscreens with the same ingredients in larger scales. Besides several different carbon-based active ingredients, consumers can also look for larger-scale, more opaque metal-oxide based sunscreens, although without mandatory labeling these may be hard to find (at least in the U.S.).
Sign a letter urging sunscreen manufacturers to stop using manufactured nanomaterials in their sunscreens.
Contact sunscreen companies directly: Call up the manufacturers of the sunscreens you use and demand that they tell you whether they use manufactured nanomaterials (ingredients measuring less than 300 nm) and what safety precautions and testing they are performing.
See a sample letter you can send to sunscreen companies.
Remember that protection against the sun’s rays cannot be guaranteed by sunscreen alone. There are many non-chemical alternatives to staying safe in the sun, which include:
Start a new trend on your block and cover up in the sun! Encourage others to change the culture of “tanning is sexy.” The new “cool” is staying healthy in the sun. Healthy skin, even if less tan, is far sexier than fatal skin cancer. It might be time to reevaluate the need to be tanned and start better protecting what is known as our third lung: the skin.
And to make sure you’re avoiding sunscreens and other personal care products that may use other risky and unhealthy ingredients, visit the Skin Deep project developed by the Environmental Working Group. While the Environmental Working Group differs in opinion on the efficacy of nanoscale sunscreen ingredients, their extensive database of sunscreen products can give consumers a good idea of which companies are using manufactured nanomaterials in their sunscreens.
Also check out the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies Inventory of Nanotechnology Consumer Products and explore a list of more than 1,000 nanotechnology products on the market worldwide, including sunscreens.
