It’s added as an ‘anti-aging’ ingredient because that’s good for marketing. “That said, I don’t believe it adds any substantial benefit to sunscreens. Then again, “given its widespread use, if caused cancer in humans, we’d expect to see more evidence by now,” Omberg says. Even so, based on studies that have been done, Lunder says the EWG “redirects” people away from oxybenzone and toward sunscreens without it. But she also pointed out that they’re not yet “sure exactly how to relate that to human health risks,” and the EWG report noted more research needs to be done. “In the lab, it has hormone-like activities,” Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst and the lead scientist on EWG’s 2017 Guide to Sunscreens, tells Teen Vogue. But the EWG claims it can cause allergic reactions on your skin and that it’s a hormone disruptor - meaning it can potentially disrupt the normal function of the hormone system. Oxybenzone is one of a small number of active ingredients approved by the FDA to block both UVB and UVA rays - meaning it can be categorized as a “broad-spectrum” ingredient - and it's in almost 65% of the sunscreens the EWG evaluated. In its report, the EWG mainly targets three ingredients it considers harmful: oxybenzone, retinyl palmitate, and methylisothiazolinone.
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