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Comment by kristianp | Hacker News Reader

> "95% of the sunscreens tested [by Choice] have high enough SPF to more than halve the incidence of skin cancer," Dr Wong said.

I found this surprising; is halving the incidence of cancer enough to consider it safe? I would expect 90 or 95% reduction in the incidence of cancer to be considered safe.

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Yeah it’s not really enough.

The actual difference between (say) SPF 30 and 50 is not a lot, 96.7% UV filtering vs 98% but I’m not 100% sure how that translates to actual rates of cancer.

However the worst offenders in the testing advertised SPF 50 but delivered SPF 4 (~75% AFAICT)

But what about the sunscreen with ingredients that are carcinogenic before you even need to consider UV protection?

I mean, that’s a whole separate question really. Alongside which constituents may be long-lasting and harmful to (for example) marine life.

Yes that would be serious so I suppose in an actual specific case regarding some specific real ingredients in products, we could discuss that.

There have been cases of benzene being detected in sunscreen. It's not an intentional ingredient, just one that is common in industrial manufacturing. I don't think that's what the parent was worried about though.

https://www.ewg.org/sunscreen/beware-of-benzene-shining-a-li...

No, benzene was specifically what I was thinking of to the point that I assumed it was so well known that it wasn't question as being a thing any more. Just like asbestos in baby powder

That’s thankfully no longer really a thing - the world has realised that there is no such thing as asbestos-free talc, so baby powder is now mostly corn-starch AFAICT.

You mean in the US, right? Because J&J were known to continue to sell their talc based products internationally.

It’s certainly stopped here in Aus too, and there was a UK documentary about it a while ago implying it’s known there as well.

Beyond that, no clue.

If you drive gas car there’s far more benzene around you than in sunscreen.

Okay, and? If you can’t see a difference in benzene as a byproduct vs an ingredient people lather in their skin and rub in sold as a way to protect against skin cancer while giving you chances of a different cancer as something totally different, then your being deliberately obtuse and not contributing to this conversation in any meaningful way.

My point is benzene is all around you. You willingly breathe it vs accidental trace amounts in a vital product.

IIRC Robocop predicted this.

You can't compare the straight percentage, a 98% filter lets through twice as much as a 99% filter.

True, so the important factor is - how does this map to your chances of getting skin-cancer?

The most reasonable answer is to look at the transmission percentage, not the blocking percentage.

No it isnt. Two photons is twice as much transmission than one photon, but both cases are totally insignificant.

In both cases though the level of UV will be easily tolerated, which is the entire point. UV index is a linear scale, so more SPF has rapidly diminishing returns even in places with a UV index of 15+.

That the duration of protection is independent of SPF makes this particularly true. There are only a handful of places in the world where atmospheric conditions might give a very high SPF marginal benefits.

How? Sorry I'm confused by that statement.

If you have a "100 unit" light bulb, and a material that blocks 98% of the light it emits, 2 units of light are getting through. If you have a material that blocks 99% of the light, only 1 unit - half as much - is getting through.

(This is why the SPF scale is inverted/measures transmittance. SPF 50 sunscreen theoretically allows through 1/50th of the UVB radiation (or whatever wavelengths are specified by your local regulator).)

98% = 2 units of UV reaching the skin

99% = 1 unit of UV reaching the skin

Thus 98% filtering lets in 2x as much as 99% filtering

> The actual difference between (say) SPF 30 and 50 is not a lot, 96.7% UV filtering vs 98% but I’m not 100% sure how that translates to actual rates of cancer.

Counterintuitively, higher SPF matters a _lot_. The difference is in the _durataion_ of the protection and in the amount of sloppiness you can afford while applying the cream.

Suppose that for you the half-life for the sunscreen is 1 hour. SPF 30 cream would thus decay to SPF 7 in 2 hours, providing little protection. But an SPF 90 cream would still offer quite reasonable SPF 25 protection.

The same applies to sloppiness. SPFs are measured in perfect conditions, with a prescribed amount of the cream spread evenly. So the higher the SPF, the more mistakes you can make while applying it.

Would different SPF sunscreens have same half-life? I have not dig into it, but I would think there is a few mechanism or chemicals and those would have different halflifes.

Certainly, but the same principle still applies. Higher SPF will provide more headroom for a given chemistry.

Considering that sunscreen in general is pretty garbage at blocking UVA, it isn't nearly as effective as traditional methods like a hat and a shirt.

> Considering that sunscreen in general is pretty garbage at blocking UVA, it isn't nearly as effective as traditional methods like a hat and a shirt.

While the US has no regulations around UVA protection, that's not true worldwide.

Europe and Australia both regulate the use of the term "broad spectrum". In Europe, that means the UVA protection needs to be at least 1/3 of the UVB protection to be able to use the term. I believe Australia is even stricter - all sunscreen is expected to have a baseline level of UVA protection.

Japan has PA ratings that go all the way up to PA++++ to specify the exact level of UVA protection.

1/3 the level of protection might sound like a significant difference, but it's not, especially since UVA is far less damaging than UVB is.

Ah interesting, I suspected there might be some differences, unfortunate that the US hasn't made any regulation around that.

Given the context of this post being a sunscreen scandal, do you know how UVA is tested? Someone earlier was saying that sunscreen is tested on humans and you see how long it takes to get burned, if that's the case and UVA doesn't burn you, I'd be curious how these UVA filtering claims are validated.

Even among sunscreens that do a decent job filtering UVA the points in this article are still relevant: https://www.ewg.org/sunscreen/report/whats-wrong-with-high-s...

Basically high SPF allows behavior thats somewhat unnatural. Someone with SPF 15 might get a tiny bit sun sensitive after a few hours and go back inside, where someone with SPF 50+ keeps going all day long and that might not be healthy.

This reminds me of the study done in Japan of the long term success rate of CPR for cardiac arrest patients, both out and in hospital. I believe it was around 15%, meaning they were still alive after 30 days and did not suffer a significant reduction in quality of life such as stroke.

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