Kabana Label Reader’s Column - June 2008
Chemical Exposure Routes and Skin Care Concerns

Exposure to chemicals that shouldn’t be in our bodies causes many diseases, from asthma to cancer. As we’ve begun to understand how these chemicals accumulate in our bodies such as through the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the water we drink; many of us choose to eat organic foods that are largely free of chemical contaminants, we avoid smoking and breathing polluted air, and we drink purified water. All these activities reduce our exposure to low level petrochemical contamination, but what about the skin care products we routinely use? In particular, what about sunscreens? 

Compared to the ways we ingest contaminating chemicals in food, air and water, the products we put on our skin result in thousands to millions of times higher exposure levels than anything found in our food, air and water. Studies have shown that 60 to 80% of what we put on our skin gets absorbed into our blood and dispersed throughout our bodies. When we use ounces of products on our skin, we absorb massive amounts of the chemicals these products are composed.

In order to provide some measure of scale, consider the amount of Tylenol you might take for a bad headache – perhaps 1000mg.  That’s 1 gram or 0.033 an ounce. Compare that to the amount of sunscreen active ingredients you’re putting on your skin: SPF 60 easily contains 30% active ingredients, which if you’re using it properly at one ounce per application equates to 10 grams of active ingredients, a conservative 60% of which gets absorbed, that’s 6 grams (6000mg) of petrochemical in your body. These same petrochemicals are known estrogen analogues, associated with early puberty in girls, breast and cervical cancers, coral bleaching, fish feminization and general toxicity. Given these high exposure rates, it's not surprising that the Center for Disease Control found that 97% of Americans excrete bioaccumulated Oxybenzone in our urine on a daily basis. Even if these chemicals are only 1/10 of 1% as effective in mimicking estrogen’s effects in our bodies, that’s equivalent to the same daily dose of estrogen prescribed by doctors as hormonal therapy for menopausal women! And that dose is only if you apply it once during the day at the beach – the American Academy of Dermatology recommends reapplication every two hours.

Exposure rates for our children are even more dire given their higher developmental sensitivity.   

Indeed, if you’re following a strict organic diet, breathing mountain air and using your Brita filter, but still applying Coppertone or Banana Boat or Neutrogena or Bullfrog or Hawaiian Tropic (or any one of the other Evil Emipre sunscreen manufacturers' products that are also, incidentally, currently getting sued for consumer fraud), you might as well not be doing anything at all since that single application overwhelms all the good you’re doing through your other healthy living activities.

Eat right, breathe right, drink right, and be sure to use petrochemical-free Kabana Skincare products.

If you wouldn’t eat it, it shouldn’t go on your skin either.