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Those looking to stay out of the sun should stay away from self-made sunscreens, suggests a new study Monday. The study looked at shared home sunscreen recipes on the popular Pinterest website and revealed that these preparations were terribly worse for protecting our skin from UV rays than commercial sunscreens.
Pinterest, like other social media sites, has quickly become a haven for users to download and share information (in this case, images) about so-called natural and alternative treatments made at the same time. House. This is a trend that has not gone unnoticed by the authors of the study.
"It made us want to look at what people are doing to be potentially dangerous for them or their children. And coconut oil had a moment – everything seemed to contain coconut oil. So that's what made us want to look at homemade sunscreens because it's very common here, "Lara McKenzie, senior researcher at the Injury Research and Policy Center, told Gizmodo by phone. Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio.
So McKenzie and his team, whose study was published in Health Communication, conducted two site searches, using the terms "sunscreen home" and "natural sunscreen." They then took a sample of the searches – every fifth image – and studied the content more closely. using all available information.
Almost all the 189 images they've studied contain praise for homemade sunscreens, about two-thirds of them offering recipes to create your own. A third also claimed that the sunscreen would provide specific protection against UVB rays, up to 50 SPF. The researchers found that overall, many, if not all, of these sunscreens simply did not pass the test.
For example, coconut oil, which is the ingredient most commonly used in these recipes, does provide UVB protection up to seven SPFs only in laboratory tests (30 SPF is the minimum level of protection recommended in sunscreens, a level that can block 97% of UVB rays). It is also worrying that these homemade sunscreens almost certainly can not offer broad spectrum protection, which means they can not protect against UVA and UVB rays. And the false sense of security that they provide can actually hurt their users.
"Some of these ingredients naturally offer some protection from the sun, but not to the extent that these pins claimed. This combination of recipe ingredients will not give you an SPF of 50, "said McKenzie. "So, at best, what is really at stake here is a very bad sunburn. And at worst, potentially a skin cancer on the road. "
In some cases, the failure comes more from the way these homemade products are made. Zinc oxide and titanium oxide, for example, figured in many recipes. However, even if they are among the best ingredients available for sunscreen, they probably will not work as well as they would with commercial sunscreens. These homemade sunscreens may not contain enough zinc, or the zinc may be unevenly distributed in the mixture, which may result in uneven protection. And unlike commercial sunscreens, homemade sunscreens may not be water resistant or stable if they are exposed to the sun.
Of course, there has long been skepticism about consumer and medical products such as sunscreens. More recently, some fuel has been added to the fire after a study conducted earlier in May by the Food and Drug Administration revealed that some sunscreen ingredients can be absorbed into the blood at remarkable levels. However, although further research is needed to find out if this uptake could be related to health effects, there is no evidence that commercial sunscreens hurt people, and public health experts – including the FDA – have continued to recommend people to use sunscreen whenever necessary.
The last thing to do, McKenzie noted, is to turn to Pinterest for alternatives.
"I think it's great to try a dinner recipe you find there, because the risk is very low. People might like it or not like it. But when it comes to something like sunscreen, it's not something you want to do yourself, it's not the time to make DIY a solution. " , she said.
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