The Environmental Working Group recommends avoiding spray sunscreens entirely. With so little known about the effects of sunscreen chemicals on the body when rubbed into the skin, they say, we may never know how much worse the effects may be when they are inhaled. Credit: Thinkstock

The Environmental Working Group recommends avoiding spray sunscreens entirely. With so little known about the effects of sunscreen chemicals on the body when rubbed into the skin, they say, we may never know how much worse the effects may be when they are inhaled. Credit: Thinkstock

The Environmental Working Group recommends avoiding spray sunscreens entirely. With so little known about the effects of sunscreen chemicals on the body when rubbed into the skin, they say, we may never know how much worse the effects may be when they are inhaled.
  • Thinkstock
  • The Environmental Working Group recommends avoiding spray sunscreens entirely. With so little known about the effects of sunscreen chemicals on the body when rubbed into the skin, they say, we may never know how much worse the effects may be when they are inhaled.

Courtesy of: EarthTalk®
E — The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: Isn’t spray sunscreen a health and environmental nightmare when it seems that more of the sunscreen ends up going up my nose than on the kid at the beach next to me? — Lillian Robertson, Methuen, MA

Spray cans of sunscreen may no longer contain chlorofluorocarbons (also known as CFCs, which were phased out in the 1990s for causing holes in the stratospheric ozone layer), but many contain other chemicals that are no good for our health or the environment. Researchers have found that the chemicals and/or minerals in the vast majority of commercially available sunscreens—even the rub-in creamy or oily varieties—can cause health problems just from ordinary use; inhaling them only magnifies the risks.

This article appears in Jun 30 – Jul 6, 2011.