One in five American will develop skin cancer at the age of 70. However, regulators in the United States have not approved solar screens that can prevent the disease more effectively.
Such security does not make sense. Americans receive more diagnostics of skin cancer than for all other forms of combined cancer. It is time for legislators to allow manufacturers of sunscreen to sell their most effective products in the United States.
The sunscreen works using a combination of “filters” to block the ultraviolet sun rays. Physical filters cover the skin with finely ground minerals, which reflect sunlight as a mirror. Think of the typical American sunscreen, with its thick and oily sensation.
Chemical filters are a more advanced way to block ultraviolet radiation. They react to the sun’s rays, neutralizing them effectively. They also feel smoother and do not leave white streaks behind him.
Over time, chemical ingredients have improved to protect against powerful UV rays that cause skin cancer, not just the weakest rays that produce sunburn. These more recent ingredients are generally at the base of the sundships available in European and Asian countries.
But American sunscreens are less effective in keeping the most dangerous cancer rays away. Unlike many developed countries, the United States ranks sunscreen as a drug, not a cosmetics. The new sunscreens must undergo animal tests and gain approval from the US Food and Drug Administration.
The process is expensive and can take years. It is simply not possible for something sold relatively by little over the counter. It is not surprising that the FDA has not approved a new type of sunscreen since 1999.
The FDA claims that the treatment of sunscreen as a medication helps “make sure that consumers have access to safe and effective sunscreen”.
But the European Union, which classifies a sunscreen as a cosmetics, holds solar screens at a stricter level of efficiency. All solar screens in EU countries must provide a “1/3 UVA protection factor from the sun protection factor”, thus proving that they can keep cancer away. Almost half of American sunscreens fail this standard, according to an analysis of 20 products.
Thus, the so-called “safer” procedure of the FDA to put new sunscreens on the market is to keep effective products from the American stores of stores.
Consider the history of Bemotrizinol, which is used in many European and Asian solar screens. Over the past two decades, the Swiss manufacturer DSM-Firmenich has spent $ 18 million trying to disrupt the approval of this standard FDA ingredient.
We do not know why the FDA drags its feet. The solar screens available in Japan, South Korea and EU countries contain Bemotrizinol for decades. Research shows that it is sure for topical use. And unlike the products previously approved by the FDA, Bemotrizinol protects against the entire spectrum of ultraviolet light.
But it still languishes on the FDA task list. The agency says it is waiting for “industry to provide information to fill data gaps” to meet its security standards.
Some social media influencers say that sunscreen chemicals can cause cancer. But there is no evidence in support of this assertion. When studies have found carcinogens in sunscreen, manufacturing defects have generally been to blame – not the content of the sundships themselves.
In other words, sunscreen is not the real public health threat – skin cancer is. Even when the Americans wear sunscreen every day – something that the American Academy of Dermatology recommends, but only 13.5% of Americans – they are probably even more at risk of cancer than they should be.
White Americans have 3% chance of developing melanoma at a given time. Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans have lower chances of being diagnosed with melanoma or dying, but if they develop melanoma, their five -year survival rate is lower. Religious use of sunscreen could prevent many of these cases.
Things started to appear a little more sunny for the regulation of sunscreen. Senator Mike Lee (Rutah) and representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.) have agitated in the past for faster approval of sunscreen ingredients.
It is now a promising moment to revisit the question. Helping Americans avoid skin cancer adapts to the indicated objectives of the Secretary of Health and Social Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Make America Healthy Again movement. The FDA commissioner, Marty Makary, has already promised his support to accelerate drug approvals and eliminate animal tests.
Americans should not have to risk cancer when they visit the beach this summer. Hopefully Washington acts quickly to bring a better sunscreen in the United States.
Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute. His latest book is “The World’s Medicine Chest: How America has produced pharmaceutical supremacy – and how to keep it”.
