Many top selling sunscreens don't offer adequate protection

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-07/nu-mts070516.php

Public Release: 6-Jul-2016
Many top selling sunscreens don't offer adequate protection
Even among best-rated sunscreens by consumers, the price can range more than 3,000 percent
Northwestern University

About 40 percent of the top selling sunscreens on Amazon.com don't meet the American Academy of Dermatology's guidelines for sunscreens. This was largely due to a lack of water or sweat resistance, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study.

The study also found consumers spend up to 3,000 percent more for products that provide the same sunscreen protection as lower-cost sunscreens.

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To identify the most popular sunscreens, investigators looked at the top rated 1 percent of the 6,500 sunscreens with four or more stars sold on Amazon.com. They came up with the 65 top-rated products. The goal was to identify high performing products that are affordable and popular to encourage adherence to sunscreen use.

Their median price was $3.32 an ounce; median SPF was 35; 92 percent had broad-spectrum coverage claims and 62 percent were labeled as water or sweat resistant. The cheapest sunscreen was 68 cents an ounce and the most expensive was $24 an ounce.

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