Other regions have similar bans.Ī busy beach in Porto Cervo, Sardinia last year. Hawaii banned those UV filters from January this year, and in 2018 Palau announced broader restrictions on sunscreens containing a number of chemicals. The focus has been on two chemicals, the ultraviolet filters oxybenzone and octinoxate, though there are other troubling ingredients. Cinzia Corinaldesi, associate professor of ecology at the Polytechnic University of Marche in Ancona, Italy, has estimated that 20,000 tonnes is washed off tourists every year in the northern Mediterranean alone, while Dr Craig Downs, another leading researcher and the head of nonprofit scientific organisation Haereticus Environmental Laboratory, thinks that between 6,000 and 14,000 tonnes are released annually in coral reef areas each year. As I got closer, I saw that it wasn’t a rainbow: it was an oily sheen coming off a group of snorkellers Autumn Blum, cosmetics scientistĮstimates vary about how much sunscreen makes it into our oceans each year. In recent years, however, it has also come under scrutiny for being potentially toxic to the environment – especially the oceans in which sunscreen-slathered tourists swim. Sunscreen is essential to protect skin against cancer, and with many pandemic-related travel restrictions around the world starting to lift, sales are expected to rocket. These were ingredients she would never put in her own products, “and yet here we were using these ingredients in the most sensitive marine environment in the world”. As well as being an experienced diver, Blum is a cosmetics scientist who has created natural product brands. “When I got back on the boat, I picked up the closest bottle of sunscreen and was reading the ingredients,” she says.
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