In short
Consumer group Choice tested 20 sunscreens and found only four provided the SPF protection their label claimed.
The brands dispute the findings and say their own testing shows their sunscreens meet or exceed their SPF claims.
What’s next?
Experts say Australians should still have confidence that sunscreens work even if some tests results show a lower SPF than what labels say.
Fun quote:
The worst performer was the most expensive — Ultra Violette’s Lean Screen SPF50+ Mattifying Zinc Sunscreen, which costs $52 for 75 millilitres, and returned an SPF rating of four.
Mr de Silva said this result was so low the team commissioned a smaller additional test at a German lab to validate the results.
“Those tests found the product had an SPF of five … an almost identical result to our initial testing,” he said.
A spokesperson for Ultra Violette said the company did an urgent SPF test of the sunscreen in April and it came back with an SPF of 61.7, confirming its original test results.
The company said it had not received a single substantiated claim of sunburn.
The company said it did not accept the Choice results as “even remotely accurate” and human error during testing was highly probable.
Hopefully there was an error in choice’s testing. I thought all sunscreens needed to be validated before being sold?
I did sunscreen testing in a university laboratory not too long ago and Cancer Council was by far the best performer in terms of the amount of UVA+B+C blocked among the brands we tested. I have real strong personal doubts about this Choice tests accuracy.
Nah, the Jessica alba one for babies made them burn worse than nothing. They can sell anything
Oh, this sounds very familiar!
There were similar poor results 9 years ago when Choice did a roundup of tests. And, of course the manufacturers questioned Choice’s testing.
And the TGA said they would consider their findings and determine any actions.
I wonder what happened?
They say the best sunscreen is the cheapest one, because people aren’t stingy when they apply it. Apply a thick layer, it helps.
That makes sense.
If you are going to apply a thick layer of white cream all over you then like wouldn’t paint be the same? At that point you’re creating a physical barrier to the sun. The point of sun screen is to not have to do that
It rubs in and becomes invisible.
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Not a good thing in Australia :/
It’s a shame that sun umbrellas and sun visors aren’t more normalised here like in Asia
