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Sunscreen labels need policing

By Times editorial
Published June 20, 2006

For seven years the Food and Drug Administration has known that many sunscreen labels mislead consumers into thinking they are being fully protected against cancer-causing sun rays. And while skin cancer cases continue to increase, the FDA's lack of urgency about forcing some truth-in-labeling changes has to end.

A lawsuit against five sunscreen manufacturers argues that the product labels are misleading. The sun protection factor, or SPF, is only a measure of the sunburn-inducing and less harmful UVB rays and not those that cause skin cancer, for example. Some products even claim they provide "broad-spectrum UVA/UVB protection," for all types of invisible ultraviolet rays, but that's not usually the case, health organizations say.

That's not good news for beachgoers and anyone working out in the Florida sun.

The FDA ordered sunscreen companies to remove absolute words like "waterproof," "all-day protection" and "sunblock" from their labels in 1999. But the agency - clearly losing sight of its priorities - never enforced these revisions because the corporations wanted to run more tests.

There is a need to move more quickly. The American Cancer Society predicts that of the 1-million skin cancer cases each year, about 62,000 of them will be melanoma and that the disease will claim about 10,700 lives. Misled by the labels, sunscreen users may be assuming they are more well-protected from the sun's harmful rays than they are. And skin cancer cases will continue to rise until the truth is spelled out on the labels.

[Last modified June 20, 2006, 06:14:13]