The real reason so many Americans are convinced sunscreen is dangerous

**David Greene** (0:04)
This is In Conversation from Apple News. I'm David Greene, in for Shumita Basu. Today, why so many Americans are rejecting sunscreen.
The final weeks of summer are here, and Americans are soaking up the last rays of sun. And many of them may be reconsidering whether or not to use sun protection. Over the past few years, an online campaign has been mounting against sunscreen. Influencers on social media have been making unsubstantiated claims that it's healthier not to use sunscreen, saying that sunscreen itself, rather than the sun, is doing harm to people's skin.

**Brian Underwood** (0:47)
I believe that sunscreen is the most toxic invention of the 20th century.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:51)
The UV chemical filters in chemical sunscreens today are some of the most toxic products that people are using.

**Brian Underwood** (0:58)
Our bodies are perfectly adapted for sunlight.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:01)
If you do burn, it probably has to do with the food you're eating and the state that you're in, as opposed to the sun, which is meant to be healing, hitting your skin.

**David Greene** (1:08)
Sunscreen is a scam.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:09)
That's basically what it is.

**David Greene** (1:11)
And while this messaging is filled with falsehoods and inaccuracies, it is growing louder. A survey this spring from the Melanoma Research Alliance found that 53% of Americans have been exposed to claims that sunscreen is harmful.
And the American Academy of Dermatology this year reported that more than 16 million adults have reduced or stopped their sunscreen use because of online messaging about its safety.

**Brian Underwood** (1:38)
Everyone's hyper online. Everyone's looking into everything. And you see this sort of momentum pick up for this type of sentiment. And it's alarming. And you're like, Oh my God, I'm putting that on my skin.

**David Greene** (1:52)
That is Brian Underwood. He is the beauty and grooming director for men's health and women's health. And he recently wrote about the forces behind this trend and what the consequences might be. Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the country, with one in five Americans developing the disease before the age of 70 And skin cancer treatment costs billions of dollars every year. Sunscreen is one of the most effective tools to prevent skin cancer. And unlike most skin care products, sunscreen is regulated as over the counter medication by the FDA. So I sat down with Brian to talk to him about what we know and don't know about sunscreen itself. Why so much misinformation has spread about it, and how new innovations and better messaging can fight the current backlash.
I think back to my time as a kid, and my mom passed away many years ago, but I'm still mad at her because she loved the beach. She grew up on the Jersey Shore. She loved getting a tan, and she rarely, if ever, encouraged me to use sunscreen. I mean, she would even sometimes offer me some of her tanning oil. She would say like, oh, a sunburn when it looks like that, that's just the beginning of what will become a good tan. I got skin cancer a couple of years ago, a basal cell carcinoma. But there's always been this, I don't know, either skepticism or lack of commitment to sunscreen.
How is this moment different from what I saw my mom going through when I was a kid?

**Brian Underwood** (3:28)
I can certainly relate to that, David. My mother was the same way. And I feel like when you and I were both kids and growing up, there wasn't much talk about it. And then, you know, sort of fast forward 15, 20 years, then I think people became hypervigilant. And sun protection was a real part of the conversation. And now we find ourselves in this really interesting moment where it's sort of boomeranged back to where we were, but worse because we know better now. And, you know, I feel like way back when we weren't as knowledgeable about it. Now there is knowledge and yet we are seeing immense rises in young people visiting tanning salons. We see on TikTok, aside from this conversation around misinformation around sunscreen, we see young people using the UV index, which is a measure of how much UV radiation is penetrating to the Earth's surface. They're using that to kind of time their tanning sessions, as opposed to what it should be used for, which is to tell you when you should be really hypervigilant about sunscreen use, or when you should consider avoiding the sun altogether. I think the difference is that we have the knowledge now, and yet we're engaging in the behaviors that we engaged in 30 years ago. But with the knowledge. We should know better. Exactly.