Sunscreen: Use It Everyday

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Published July 4, 2007

When Seattleites hit the beach in good weather like this, they tend to go bare in the ways that matter to their skin health -- with no or inadequate sun protection, without well-labeled sunscreens, without products that meet the quality found in other parts of the world. According to The New York Times, the federal Food and Drug Administration could be just weeks away from issuing new regulations on sunscreens, finally updating a nearly 30-year-old voluntary system. But the agency has been planning to confirm new rules since 1999. It missed a congressional deadline of May 2006. Attempting to fill the huge gaps created by FDA's irresponsibility, the Environmental Working Group recently rated hundreds of products and issued a scathing overview of U.S. failures. The FDA comes off as a clown act. For up to a decade, it has failed to finish reviews on effective products that are in wide use abroad, while allowing chemicals whose properties include a tendency to break down in sun. Companies are permitted to make vague or misleading claims. The best medical advice is to use sunscreen every day. Research has shown daily use can have dramatic effects on skin cancer rates. Seattle residents tend to exempt themselves on cloudy days. That's a mistake, repeated hundreds of times a year. On the Net: ewg.org