4 things to know about the new sunscreen ingredient the FDA approved
74 points
5 hours ago
| 7 comments
| npr.org
| HN
emptybits
3 hours ago
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Bemotrizinol is the ingredient being discussed.

If you're looking for a specific product to try, check out Ombrelle and also La Roche-Posay's Anthelios line. I share this as a Canadian (bemotrizinol has been available here for years), but check the ingredients because it may vary by country because of regulations.

Aside: I did a bunch of sunscreen research some time ago for my family. I like the non-absorbing/non-reactive aspect of mineral screens but settled on a chemical screen and bemotrizinol seemed favoured but we landed instead on the Kinesys brand of sprays which we love because they're very waterproof and sweatproof in our experience but they feel like almost nothing. YMMV.

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Grombobulous
2 hours ago
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Sadly, you’ll have to wait for those brands in the US.

> DSM-Firmenich has exclusive rights to market bemotrizinol in the U.S. for 18 months. It will be sold under the brand name Parsol Shield.

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chadcmulligan
2 hours ago
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+1 for La Roche - my daughter has fair sensitive skin and burns easily, its the best she finds (in Australia)
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jzig
3 hours ago
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Thank you for sharing your experience. Any idea If I search for Kinesys spray product on the American Amazon site will it be the same? What are the active ingredients?
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emptybits
40 minutes ago
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Dunno. Brands definitely change their ingredients to conform to national health/drug regs so I’d inquire via their US site. kinesysactive.com
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hankbond
2 hours ago
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Would have liked to hear about the safety profile for marine life that this has compared to other chemical sunscreens.
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fhdkweig
4 hours ago
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This topic has been posted at about the same time in another thread, but neither has any comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48523165

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mil22
2 hours ago
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BEMT is the first new ingredient allowed by the FDA since the 1990s. It's meaningful but a very narrow decision. The FDA still has not approved any of the following sunscreens that have been widely used outside of the US, in some cases for decades:

- DHHB / Uvinul A Plus

- EHT / Uvinul T150

- MBBT / Tinosorb M

- Iscotrizinol / Uvasorb HEB

- Drometrizole trisiloxane - Mexoryl XL

- Methoxypropylamino cyclohexenylidene ethoxyethylcyanoacetate - Mexoryl 400

- Polysilicone-15 - Parsol SLX

- Disodium phenyl dibenzimidazole tetrasulfonate - Neo Heliopan AP

- Tris-biphenyl triazine - Tinosorb A2B

- Phenylene bis-diphenyltriazine - TriAsorB

- Diethylhexyl syringylidene malonate (photostabilizer)

If you live in the US, you are quite literally taking a risk with your health using US-made sunscreens. Luckily brands like Beauty of Joseon (Korean) and many others are readily available through sites like Yamibuy.

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qwerpy
1 hour ago
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No one cares more about sun protection than Asian women living in SoCal. My wife and her friends usually use Korean or Japanese brands that they buy here in the states. Seems to work just fine.
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rdedev
2 hours ago
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I guess this is the reason why the sunscreens from haruharu are now suddenly available in amazon
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erelong
3 hours ago
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certain long clothes allows for skipping sunscreen entirely in perpetuity
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bawolff
3 hours ago
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Unless you are talking about a Burqa, i think that is not true.
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userbinator
43 minutes ago
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Also a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thawb

While this is commonly brought up as a religious issue, religion obviously predates sunscreen but not sunburn, so it could've originally been a practical reason --- elevated to religious dogma --- why it is customary from that part of the world to wear highly concealing clothing.

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andrew_lettuce
3 hours ago
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This isn't realistic for something likeriding your bike where you get lots of sun on your face and limbs.
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OptionOfT
3 hours ago
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Your clothes still need to have a certain SPF, and you're not gonna wear gloves when 100 outside are you?
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gibspaulding
3 hours ago
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Just about any shirt is going to have a higher spf/upf than any normal sunscreen. Also who puts sunscreen on their hands??

A long sleeve sunshirt with a hood or better yet a floppy hat is where it’s at. I have a couple of the Colombia PFG ones that I wear for working outside, though I’d like to see if I can find something cotton instead since I’m not a huge fan of synthetic fibers.

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erelong
59 minutes ago
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Pretty much this

Also for the other comments there are gloves and face masks but I think most people do fine without them unless you're working outside

For the nerds here working indoors during the hottest times of the day... they may need more sun than they get really, rather than blocking it with toxic sunscreens (depends on where they live?)

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hilariously
3 hours ago
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I put sunscreen on my hands or I will have completely burnt hands. There's many of us who cant have more than about an hour in direct sunlight (and sometimes much less) before redness and soon burning occurs.
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ViscountPenguin
2 hours ago
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Nearly everyone I know puts sunscreen on their hands. Here in Australia, the world melanoma capital, sun safety is drilled into you as a kid, to the extent that "no hat no play" used to be official policy in most schools.
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gacgacgac
2 hours ago
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Who puts sunscreen on their hands? People in the sun who want to avoid wrinkles and burns and skin cancer on their hands.

If it's exposed skin, it gets sunscreen.

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borski
2 hours ago
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I put sunscreen on my hands.
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adambatkin
2 hours ago
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People who don't enjoy sunburns on their hands put sunscreen on their hands.
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XorNot
3 hours ago
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While generally true, it's worth remembering that thin shirts can have an SPF as low as 50 or so, which isn't much.
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kube-system
1 hour ago
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SPF is logarithmic so high numbers can be misleading. The FDA has recently banned labeling above SPF 60 for this reason. Doctors usually recommend 30
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hollerith
2 hours ago
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It means only 2% of the harmful rays (UVA) are getting through the shirt or alternatively the skin under the shirt can spend 50 times as long in the sun as it could without any protection.
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tabletcorry
1 hour ago
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A typical tshirt is closer to SPF 7, depending on color and weight.
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ChrisArchitect
4 hours ago
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Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48507024

and related large discussion this week:

European sunscreens are safer than American (2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48503940

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