The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which regulates sunscreen products, hasn’t labeled either type of sunscreen unsafe. But as of February 21, 2019, the FDA has proposed a rule to update regulatory requirements for sunscreen products sold in the United States.

As part of this proposed rule, the FDA has called for additional safety information on 12 active ingredients commonly found in chemical sunscreens: (Table.2)

A small randomized clinical trial published in May 2019 and January 2020 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) revealed that four of these sunscreen chemicals (avobenzone, oxybenzone, octocrylene, and ecamsule) are absorbed into the bloodstream at significantly greater levels than 0.5 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL). That’s far above the amount at which the FDA requires topical medications to undergo safety studies to determine possible toxic effects.

Although study authors say these results support the need for more research, they also say their findings don’t indicate that sunscreen is unsafe. What’s more, the known health risks of sun exposure far outweigh the potential risk of absorbing sunscreen chemicals.

Still, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) recommends avoiding chemical sunscreens with oxybenzone because of concerns that this ingredient may disrupt hormones and cause allergic skin reactions.

A review published in January 2019 in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology found that common chemical sunscreen ingredients such as oxybenzone may bleach and damage coral reefs and have been identified in various species of fish worldwide, which has possible consequences for the food chain.

For this reason, some tourist destinations, including Hawaii, have banned oxybenzone, as the Center for Biological Diversity notes.
Meanwhile, the ingredients in physical sunscreens — zinc oxide and titanium oxide — have been generally recognized as safe and effective by the FDA.

Read more : 11 material that you should avoid In chemical sunscreen