Only one-quarter of sunscreens on store shelves are safe and effective, new report says

(CNN) — Only one fourth of sunscreens on store shelves in the United States deliver safe and effective protection against the harmful rays of the sun, according to an annual report which analyzed more than 2,200 sunscreens available for purchase in 2025.

“Our criteria include the ability of the sunscreen’s active ingredients to provide balanced protection against both UVA and UVB rays, as well as any hazardous chemical ingredients in the product,” said David Andrews, acting chief science officer at the Environmental Working Group, or EWG, a consumer organization that has produced the annual sunscreen guide since 2007.

Released Tuesday, the 2025 Sunscreen Guide lists the best baby and child sunscreens, including those with the best “bang for the buck;” highly rated daily use sunscreens, including moisturizers with SPF; the best lip balms with SPF; and the top recreational sunscreens designed for outdoor activities such as sports or spending time at the beach.

“There are nearly 500 products we are recommending consumers seek out as their first option,” Andrews said. “We want people to wear sunscreen and at the same time recognize there are other ways to protect their skin as well — seeking shade, wearing wide-brimmed hats, lightweight long-sleeve shirts and pants and covering up your feet are very effective ways, especially if you’re concerned about sunscreen ingredients.”

Choosing not to protect your skin from the sun, an idea promoted by some Tiktok influencers, should not be an option, according to Dr. Kathleen Suozzi, a dermatologic surgeon at Yale School of Medicine.

“Extensive research has shown that UV radiation from the sun is a significant cause of skin cancers such as melanoma. It’s really indisputable at this point,” Suozzi told CNN in a prior interview. “UV radiation has both UVA and UVB, and we know that both of them damage the DNA in skin cells.”

Concerns with chemical sunscreens

Sunscreens come in two types, chemical and mineral. Chemical sunscreens are designed to soak into the skin as a chemical reaction absorbs ultraviolet radiation as energy and disperses it as heat.

Testing released in 2019 by the US Food and Drug Administration found seven chemical ingredients — avobenzone, oxybenzone, octocrylene, ecamsule, homosalate, octisalate, and octinoxate — were absorbed from the skin into the bloodstream after a single day of use.

The concentration of the seven chemicals in the blood increased each day after application and remained above FDA safety levels a week later. Two of the chemicals — homosalate and oxybenzone — were still above safety thresholds at day 21.

Once in the bloodstream, these chemicals can enter waterways via wastewater, threatening coral reefs and aquatic life. Due to the increasing devastation of their coral reefs, Hawaii; Key West, Florida; the US Virgin Islands; Bonnaire; Aruba; and Palau, an island in the Pacific, have banned the use of several chemical sunscreens, particularly oxybenzone.

Oxybenzone has also been linked to lower testosterone levels in adolescent boys, hormone changes in men, and shorter pregnancies and disrupted birth weights in babies.

However, the use of oxybenzone use has fallen dramatically, according to EWG’s 2025 Sunscreen Guide. Once in 70% of non-mineral sunscreens, oxybenzone is now in only 9% of products, Andrews said.

The Personal Care Products Council, which represents sunscreen manufacturers, disagreed with the report’s findings.

“This report sows consumer confusion and poses a serious risk by undermining public trust in products that are scientifically proven, rigorously tested, and highly effective at protecting against harmful UV radiation,” said PCPC chief scientists and executive vice president of science, Alexandra Kowcz, in an email.

Safety of mineral-based sunscreens

Mineral-based sunscreens work differently. Instead of being absorbed into the skin, the minerals physically deflect and block the sun’s rays. Zinc oxide and titanium dioxide are the two FDA-approved mineral sunscreen ingredients, and they do not appear to harm marine ecosystems, Andrews said.

“Of the 2,217 products we tested for this year’s report, 43% use zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, up from just 17% in 2007,” Andrews said. “That’s good news for consumers and the environment.”

However, some mineral products may contain chemical “boosters” designed to artificially raise the sun protection factor (SPF), the report said.

“Using chemical boosters may result in a lower concentration of active mineral ingredients at the expenses of consumer safety,” Andrews said. “We want to ensure these sunscreens are providing the SPF advertised on their labels as well as balanced UVA and UVB protection.

Some of these boosters, such as the solvent butyloctyl salicylate, or BOS, absorb UV rays much like chemical sunscreen ingredients, Andrews said.

“Yet they’re marketed primarily as solvents that improve how a product feels on the skin and reduce the white cast that mineral sunscreens can leave behind,” he said.

“BOS is structurally similar to octisalate, one of 12 chemical sunscreen ingredients the FDA has identified as needing more safety data,” Andrews added. “However, BOS is not regulated as an active ingredient and hasn’t undergone the same level of safety evaluation.”

EWG first raised concerns about SPF boosters in an August 2016 letter to then–FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, urging the agency to investigate “sunscreen ingredients that may enable manufacturers to advertise higher SPF values for their over-the-counter sunscreen products without offering users truly enhanced protection from UVA and UVB rays.”

The agency should also investigate any correlation “between protection from skin reddening, immunosuppression, long-term skin damage and cancer,” the letter said. To date, no action has been taken by the FDA, Andrews said.

Additional consumer protection proposed by FDA still in limbo

The FDA proposed updated rules for sunscreen safety in 2019. Industry was asked to provide additional testing on 12 sunscreen chemicals of concern, including the seven which FDA testing showed are easily absorbed into the bloodstream. That has yet to be done, Andrews said.

The FDA proposal also asked manufacturers to test spray sunscreen products to prove aerosolized chemicals cannot be inhaled into the deep lung — that testing has also not occurred, he said.

“When the FDA tested aerosol cosmetics a few years ago, they found some products did have very small particle sizes that could be inhaled in the deep lung and lead to possible health harms,” Andrews said. “The same concern applies to spray sunscreens.”

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, inhalation of such particles can cause serious health effects in individuals at greatest risk, such as “people with heart or lung disease, people with diabetes, older adults and children (up to 18 years of age).”

Yet aerosol sunscreens remain popular among consumers — 26% of the sunscreens tested were sprays — despite potential inhalation risks and the difficulty of providing even and adequate coverage with a spray, Andrews said.

“An Australian study found that even under light breeze conditions of say, 6- to 10-miles-an-hour, a significant portion of an aerosol sunscreen just blows away,” he said. “I was at a soccer game last weekend, and when someone sprayed sunscreen, I felt like it went over the entire field. I’m not convinced they got any sunscreen on themselves.”

The FDA also called for a cap of 60 SPF on sunscreen products in the 2019 proposal, saying any benefit over 60 is extremely minor. Therefore labeling sunscreens at levels higher than 60 SPF could be misleading consumers by providing a false sense of sun protection, the FDA said. That too, has not been accomplished, and consumers continue to spend money on these products, Andrews said.

“One of the primary drivers of consumer purchasing is the highest SPF number possible,” he said. “Consumers are not getting the message that higher SPF values don’t offer a clear benefit.”

CNN reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA, for comment but did not hear back before publication.

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