“The FDA has approved a new sunscreen ingredient for the first time in 20 years. The reform is a long time coming—the ingredient, called bemotrizinol, has been available in Europe for decades—and should make sunscreens more effective. Bemotrizinol can effectively block both UVA and UVB rays, both of which can cause skin cancer, while sunscreens available in the US have historically been poorer at blocking UVA rays,” reports The Doomslayer.
CNN adds:
The US Food and Drug Administration approved a new sunscreen ingredient — bemotrizinol, or BEMT — that experts say is a safer option than many chemical ingredients currently in use in the United States.
“Bemotrizinol has been used safely in Europe for decades, and FDA’s action will increase competition and consumer confidence in sunscreen products,” US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy said….Adding BEMT is welcome news to many because there are few choices on US store shelves that are both safe and effective, according to an annual report by the Environmental Working Group.
Sunscreens on US store shelves today excel at blocking the radiation that causes visible sunburns, called ultraviolet B rays. However…they routinely fail to shield against deep-penetrating ultraviolet A, or UVA rays, which drive premature aging, suppress the immune system and are the primary contributor to skin cancer, according to the American Cancer Society…
US sunscreens deliver on average just 24% of the UVA protection implied by their sun protection factor, or SPF, labels….
BEMT is a chemical filter that provides adequate UVA protection, is not easily absorbed into the skin, and has the most robust safety data on any UV filter to date.
It “blocks both UVA and UVB rays,” notes NPR
For the first time in nearly three decades, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new chemical UV filter for use in sunscreens sold in the U.S. And that has many dermatologists cheering.
“This is a very big deal,” says Dr. Heather Rogers, a dermatologist in Seattle and a fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology.
The new ingredient is called bemotrizinol, and it has several advantages over the chemical sunscreen ingredients previously available in the U.S., Rogers says.
“It hits like really every box for us that we have been waiting for as dermatologists and consumers,” Rogers says.
Americans were long “sunburned by bureaucracy,” noted the Cato Institute. “Europeans use modern UVA filters like bemotrizinol, but we can’t because the FDA’s outdated approval process delays access for decades.” Dr. Jeffrey Singer, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, explained how FDA regulations limited “consumers’ choices to decades-old formulations that offer less comprehensive protection than the options available to people in other countries.”
In 2023, Insider reported that the “U.S. has awful sunscreen compared to Asia and Europe. Strict, decades-old FDA rules are to blame: European and Asian sunscreens boast stronger and smoother formulas than sunscreens found in the US. That’s because the FDA is slower to approve new UV filters compared to other countries.”
Better sunscreens save lives by reducing skin cancer.
But the FDA can be rather slow in approving products that save lives. The FDA didn’t approve a home test for HIV until 24 years after it first received an application. According to an FDA advisory committee, the test held “the potential to prevent the transmission of more than 4,000 new HIV infections in its first year of use alone.” That means thousands of people likely got infected with AIDS as a result of the delay in approving it. As Roger Parloff noted in Fortune, the FDA’s delay in approving the home HIV test was a “scandal.” It caused the deaths of thousands of people.
