ONLY 20% OF SUNSCREENS ACTUALLY MEET SAFETY STANDARDS, NEW REPORT FINDS

The Environmental Working Group's 2026 Guide to Sunscreens, now in its 20th year, analysed 2,990 products and found that only about 20 percent roughly 597 met the organisation's criteria for both safety and effectiveness.

A peer-reviewed study conducted by EWG scientists as part of the report found that, on average, tested sunscreens delivered only about a quarter of the UVA protection and 59 percent of the UVB protection stated on their labels.

The report did flag genuine long-term progress on ingredient safety specifically: retinyl palmitate, a form of vitamin A once found in roughly 40 percent of sunscreens back in 2010, now appears in only about 3 percent of products - a shift EWG senior scientist Alexa Friedman called good news for consumers, given dermatologists' warnings against combining retinoid-family ingredients with direct sun exposure. The majority of products EWG did recommend rely predominantly on mineral filters that sit on the skin's surface and physically deflect UV rays, rather than chemical filters absorbed into the skin.

The gap between labelled and actual UVA protection is arguably the more consequential finding for everyday buyers, since UVA rays - responsible for deeper skin damage, premature ageing and a meaningful share of skin cancer risk - don't cause the immediate, visible sunburn that makes inadequate UVB protection obvious in the moment. A sunscreen underperforming specifically on its UVA claims can feel like it's working, in the sense of preventing sunburn, while still leaving skin under-protected against longer-term damage.

For a product category most people apply based entirely on the SPF number printed on the front of the bottle, a report suggesting four in five products fall short of their own stated protection level is a meaningful reason to look past that single figure toward broader safety data before buying.