No one knows for sure how the toxin ended up in sun care products. Benzene was not an ingredient in any of the sunscreens, so experts suspect contamination had to have occurred during the manufacturing process.

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CVS also stopped selling CVS Health After Sun Aloe Vera and CVS Health After Sun Aloe Vera Spray a day after the Johnson & Johnson recall was announced. This product was distributed nationwide through a variety of retail channels. For a list of all lots impacted by this voluntary CVS Health also stopped selling two of its after-sun care products due to similar findings. But other sunscreens and after-sun cosmetics, which also tested positive for the toxin, remain on the market (the full list is below).Your skin is your body’s largest immune system organ. Excess sun exposure can impair the immune system, but many sunscreen chemicals are readily absorbed into the bloodstream, where they could cause ill effects, too. However, you can get too much of a good thing, which is why it’s important to take steps to prevent overexposure and sunburns. Based on the best current science and toxicology data, we continue to recommend sunscreens with the mineral active ingredients zinc oxide and titanium dioxide, because they are the only two ingredients the FDA recognized as safe or effective in their proposed draft rules,” Burns says. Here’s a big takeaway that’ll make things somewhat less complicated. EWG recommends avoiding all spray sunscreens. Other sun-smart methods to avoid overexposures are a must. In fact, sunscreen should actually be your last line of defense against the sun after adopting other more effective measures. (More on those later.)

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Avoid overexposure during peak sunlight hours, and use sunglasses and sun-protective hats and clothing. These things reduce your risk of burns without sunscreen. Final Thoughts Oxybenzone, found to be a troublesome ingredient for many reasons, is on the way out. As EWG puts it, “The rapid decline in use of oxybenzone is due to concerns about skin absorption and its potential to harm to health. But it’s still permitted for use in U.S. sunscreens, so consumers should remain vigilant – it’s in just 6 percent of all products and 13 percent of the non-mineral recreational sunscreens in our Guide to Sunscreens. This represents a steep drop by more than half compared to how much the ingredient was used in 2022.” In a previous EWG review, about 40 percent of sunscreens contained vitamin A ingredients. This type of ingredient can react with UV rays and increase the risk of skin tumors, according to government animal testing data. There is no perfect sunscreen. Mineral sunscreens generally rate safer, but they often contain nanoparticles that are not tightly regulated or studied for long-term impact on human or aquatic health. Chemical sunscreens often contain hormone-disrupting chemicals or even an ingredient that could trigger skin cancer. Still, EWG’s report helps consumers seeking sunscreen find safer choices while avoiding the most poorly rated brands.

Benzene could be a byproduct of the process of making the chemicals that companies sell to the formulators of personal care products and sunscreens. Or it could be that some of those chemicals break down into benzene, although that seems less likely,” Faber said. When direct sunlight hits our skin under peak conditions, our bodies manufacture high levels of vitamin D. Not getting enough vitamin D has been linked to all sorts of health problems, including cancer, arthritis, depression and other diseases.

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The vast majority of tested sunscreens, however, were free of benzene, and experts stress the importance of sunscreen use to protect skin from the aging and cancerous effects of the sun. He said that “CVS products have not been recalled,” but the company has paused sales of the two CVS products, which tested positive for benzene, “out of an abundance of caution.” CVS Health is working with the supplier of the products to “take appropriate additional steps,” he added.We are aware of the study reporting the presence of benzene in some of the sunscreen products tested,” the council said in a statement. “There is nothing more important than safety. If our consumers can’t believe in a product or rely on it to do what it says, then nothing else matters.”