Why your sunscreen is finally getting a major upgrade
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This is Ira Glass. On This American Life, one thing we like is a good mystery. Sometimes about really big things, but most times, the little mysteries are the best.
Our lost and found is currently filled with pants. I don't know, I've never seen this happen. Wait, this is true? This is true. Mysteries of every size, each week. This American Life, wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Until this week, the United States hadn't approved a new sunscreen ingredient in almost 30 years. That changed when the FDA approved a new chemical UV filter for U.S. sunscreens on Tuesday. NPR health correspondent Maria Godoy is here to tell us all about it. Hey, Maria. Hi, Gina. So what is this ingredient that just got approved?
Yeah, it's called Bimetrezanol, and it's a chemical UV filter that's been used in sunscreens in Europe and Asia for a long time. Often it's also sold under the name Tenosorb S. Here you will see it as Parcel Shield. That's the trademark name for it from the company that got it approved for sale in the U.S. I talked about this with Dr. Heather Rogers. She's a dermatologist in Seattle and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Dermatology. And she says she is psyched about this new ingredient.
It hits like really every box for us that we have been waiting for as dermatologists and consumers.
I love sunscreen, so I'm really excited about this. We actually did an episode last year on why U.S. sunscreens have lagged behind European and Asian ones. And part of the reason was that there's different regulations for how sunscreen is approved in the U.S.
Yeah, that's right. I absolutely love sunscreens, too.
What is the new sunscreen ingredient approved by the FDA?
Use it every day of the year. And you're right. It's a long process, partially because in the U.S. there's a higher bar for proving that they're safe and effective. In Europe, they treat sunscreens as cosmetics, and it's also expensive. So companies in the past have looked to get new sunscreen ingredients approved here. But they gave up because it just cost way too much money. And in fact, it took 20 years to get this new ingredient approved here and millions and millions of dollars.
Today on the show, why approve this new sunscreen now after a 20-year wait? Plus, how it works. I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
You know, every day on Up First, NPR's Golden Globe-nominated morning news podcast, we bring you three essential stories. At the heart of each story are questions. What really happened? What really mattered? What happens next? At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and to follow the facts. Follow Up First wherever you get your podcasts and start your day knowing what matters and why.
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Okay, Maria, we're talking about the newly FDA-approved sunscreen ingredient bimetrezanol. And to understand it, I think we need a little sunscreen 101. Sunscreen's main purpose is to protect against two types of UV rays, UVA and UVB. These are different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, but that's probably not helpful for people. So, Maria, break down what's the difference between both of them.
Okay, so what I use this heuristic, which is UVA, those are the longer wavelengths, and they're responsible for aging. So A for aging, like premature aging. UVB, they're shorter wavelengths. And those are the ones responsible for, you know, burning, basically. B for burning. A for aging. Okay.
But they actually both kind of affect both things, right? It's a little bit more complicated than that.
Yeah, they can both cause skin cancer, basically. Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, UVA, one thing about it is that people don't realize that it can come through windows. That's one reason you should be wearing sunscreen if you're driving. So Heather Rogers actually has this photo on her website that was originally published in the New England Journal of Medicine. And it shows this man who was a professional truck driver for nearly three decades.
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