Sunscreen Ingredients Explained: Safety, Absorption, and How Modern Sunscreens Work

[Intro] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Facially Conscious with myself, Trina Reneá, Esthetician, and Rebecca Gadberry, the Cosmetic Ingredient Guru, highly-acclaimed educator and award-winning journalist. She is the cosmetic industry leader.

We are gathered here together with you to talk about this crazy world of esthetics. It's confusing out there in this big, wide world. That's why we are here to help explain it to you all, subject by subject. We will be your go-to girls. And from our perspective, without giving medical advice, we will keep things facially conscious. 

Let's get started!

00:58 Trina Reneá: Hello, everyone. How are you today? Hello, Rebecca. How are you doing? 

01:02 Rebecca Gadberry: Hello, Trina.

01:03 Trina Reneá: Hello. We are here today to take a deep dive into some sunscreen ingredients and questions that we didn't hit on the last episode. So for those of you who like a little bit deeper information, we are here today to talk about it. 

I wanted to start with the three main ingredients that most people see out there for sunscreens. I think the chemical one is called octinoxate. 

01:35 Rebecca Gadberry: Excellent. You did it. 

01:37 Trina Reneá: Thank you. 

01:38 Rebecca Gadberry: We were practicing before we started. 

01:42 Trina Reneá: I had to use that, what's it called, where you break the word up? 

01:45 Rebecca Gadberry: I don't remember, but it's octinoxate. 

01:47 Trina Reneá: Octinoxate.

01:49 Rebecca Gadberry: And we'll have that in the show notes so you can understand when you see it. 

01:53 Trina Reneá: Yes. You know where they say something in a dictionary and they have the word and then they have like how to pronounce the word? O-C-T-I-N-O-X-A-T-E. Ta-da! 

And then the other two are zinc and titanium, which are, what are they called? Physical?

02:16 Rebecca Gadberry: Physical sunscreens.

02:17 Trina Reneá: Physical sunscreens, which have been the hype for the last several many years with people who want a more natural sunscreen, and as of late have gotten a little bit slammed. I'm not sure what's going on, but I was hoping, Rebecca, you could give us a quick overview on why it's getting some negative press, shall we say.

02:43 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, first of all. If you want a natural sunscreen, there are no natural sunscreens that are allowed by the FDA in U.S. products, including zinc oxide and titanium dioxide. 

02:53 Trina Reneá: Which are minerals.

02:55 Rebecca Gadberry: They are minerals but they are chemically altered to make them more potent and less harmful to the body. Zinc is a different mineral than zinc oxide, as you can hear. And titanium dioxide simply means that there's two oxygens combined with the titanium molecule. Titanium dioxide. And di means two. 

So we've got different than we find in nature. They have been chemically altered, meaning that they've just been put together in a laboratory or under a chemical process. That's all it means. But the reason that they're getting bad reps or raps or whatever is because, for instance, on octinoxate, it is the most popular sunscreen in the world, but it also, about 10% of all users, have an irritation response to it.

So we've come up with other sunscreens that are less irritating or not irritating at all. You'll find some of those in your sunscreens, like homosalate and octocrylene, oxybenzone. We'll talk about those in relationship to coral reefs in a little while, because they're some of the bad players that have been determined to work with coral reefs. But I have a different opinion about coral reef issues, so we'll go deeper into that. 

Titanium dioxide was found in the bloodstream, and so has micronized or nanoparticles of zinc oxide. Usually, there's not a problem when we find something in the blood. It's simply excreted out the urine. And if you see, oh, this ingredient was excreted in the urine, well, that's a good thing because it means that even though it penetrated, it wasn't retained in the body. You don't have to worry about it. 

But as far as zinc oxide as a nanoparticle, meaning that it's really tiny, and it goes on sheer and invisible, and you can't see any cast to it at all on the skin, that means it's going into the skin and going into the bloodstream. 

05:15 Trina Reneá: Right, because the reason we used mineral sunscreens was because they sat on the surface and they were too big a molecule to penetrate. 

05:22 Rebecca Gadberry: Right. 

05:24 Trina Reneá: So you're saying that they've made them so small to try and make them disappear on the skin so you don't see that white film, and that's what's getting into the bloodstream. But is it dangerous?

5:32 Rebecca Gadberry: Right, and then they can be picked up in cells because they're so small. When they're picked up in cells, they can start to cast off certain free radicals in the cell that can alter the genetics or the DNA of the cell, and we wind up with problems. 

So the micronized version is going to show a little bit when you put it on, but after a minute or two, it'll go invisible. It'll disappear. That's what you want to look for with zinc oxide, something that goes on a little visible but disappears as opposed to something that goes on sheer from the beginning. 

06:10 Trina Reneá: I see. 

06:12 Rebecca Gadberry: Okay. As far as titanium dioxide is concerned, it's been detected in the bloodstream. when tattoos are applied with titanium dioxide. So when this was first detected, they thought that titanium dioxide would also be picked up in applying in sunscreens, but it isn't. It's too large of a molecule.

06:36 Trina Reneá: Wait, so they use titanium dioxide in tattoo ink? 

06:40 Rebecca Gadberry: Tattoo ink, uh-huh. 

06:42 Trina Reneá: Oh, I didn't know that. 

06:43 Rebecca Gadberry: There's also titanium dioxide that's used in paint, so is zinc oxide, and in other products in our environment. And they get put into the water supply. They're so small, or they used to be so small, they'd make it through water purification and people would drink them. So we were also finding them in the body that way. But our purification systems had been improved and so that doesn't happen anymore. 

07:14 Trina Reneá: So what's this you were talking about, the ingredients with the— is it killing the coral reef? What's happening with that?

07:24 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, about 10, 12 years ago, maybe longer, it's hard for me to remember back that far, there was a study that was done on coral in a confined environment, basically in large aquariums. They found that if you put octocrylene or octo... What's the one? The octinoxate that we were just talking about? 

07:47 Trina Reneá: Octinoxate. 

07:49 Rebecca Gadberry: In there, in a limited and confined environment, it had an effect on the corals and the corals died. But when you put it in the ocean, it's not the same. You're just putting a little bit in. Even if everybody that day that ran into the ocean had those chemical sunscreens on, it doesn't affect the coral. It's too diluted. 

What is affecting the coral are climate change, especially with the oil industry, the soil runoff from agriculture using pesticides and fertilizers. That definitely affects the coral. And then overfishing. Now, those are all three big industries. They are part of what's promoting this concept that sunscreens kill coral reefs, because it's easier to force us to change than it is to get them to change. 

So I just kind of have a question there. I haven't seen any clear data at all that is scientifically based. In other words, the study was well put together as far as science is concerned that shows that any sunscreen affects the coral reefs. 

09:07 Trina Reneá: Okay. So that's kind of just a thought out there that's being pushed around. 

09:13 Rebecca Gadberry: Right, by you-know-who. 

09:17 Trina Reneá: Moving on. 

09:19 Rebecca Gadberry: Check for the bomb under your car when you get in the car. 

09:23 Trina Reneá: Okay. So what is silicone in sunscreen? I've heard that there's some sunscreens that have silicone in them?

09:32 Rebecca Gadberry: A lot of sunscreens do. And the reason that we put silicones in sunscreen…

09:36 Trina Reneá: What is a silicone, for the public? 

09:39 Rebecca Gadberry: A silicone is an easily spreading ingredient that improves the spreadability of products. 

09:49 Trina Reneá: Like dimethicone. 

09:50 Rebecca Gadberry: Dimethicone. 

09:51 Trina Reneá: It's a silicone? 

09:52 Rebecca Gadberry: Right. You might see something called cyclopentasiloxane. Whenever you see siloxane, you're looking at a silicone. Whenever you see dimethicone, whenever you see cone, you're looking at a silicone. 

10:09 Trina Reneá: And I think that they use them a lot in primers, right? 

10:12 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, they do. 

10:12 Trina Reneá: Like sunscreen primers because it glides on the skin. It kind of feels a little greasy when I originally started using, when primers came on the scene. I hated the feel of them because I felt like it was this almost like a greasy feeling. Which you then get used to and it does go into the skin nicely. 

10:33 Rebecca Gadberry: It evaporates. It doesn't go into the skin. 

10:35 Trina Reneá: Oh, it just evaporates. 

10:37 Rebecca Gadberry: Like the cyclopentasiloxane or the siloxane group, the cyclo groups, they evaporate. They're kind of like fragrances that evaporate. They turn into a gaseous state and they evaporate, leaving what's behind feeling like it penetrated the skin. It's still sitting on the surface of the skin. 

Silicones don't penetrate the skin. They're too large a molecule. What they do is they allow the even spreadability of the sunscreen ingredients. So you don't get splotches of protection like you do with the old-fashioned sunscreens. It evenly applies it so you get an even protection of the sunscreen over your skin as you put it on. If it feels really greasy when you put it on, wait a couple of minutes and it'll feel soft. 

11:25 Trina Reneá: I also find that it fills in very fine crepey-ness on the skin. 

11:30 Rebecca Gadberry: Certain silicones do, but not all.

11:31 Trina Reneá: Yeah, and like fine lines also. Not all of them do that.

11:37 Rebecca Gadberry: No, and the ones in sunscreens don't do that. 

11:39 Trina Reneá: So basically, silicones are used in sunscreens as a spreading agent. 

11:43 Rebecca Gadberry: Exactly. And it increases the SPF. Because if you're looking at the SPF and you need to see if it protects all over the skin, and you're not using silicones or another spreading agent, then the SPF isn't going to be as high. So you can use less sunscreen material and increase your SPF that way. 

12:06 Trina Reneá: Because it's spreading it in more evenly. 

12:09 Rebecca Gadberry: Right.

12:10 Trina Reneá: What about antioxidants in sunscreen? 

12:13 Rebecca Gadberry: They're really good in sunscreens, because when certain sunscreens, the chemical sunscreens that we were talking about in the sunscreen episode with everybody, when they lower the UV energy to a heat energy, they also throw off free radicals. That has been interpreted as causing aging or causing cancer, because free radicals can lead to that.

There's been no study that links sunscreens as causing. cancer. None. It's all been theoretical assumption. This is where my confirmation bias goes, so I'm going to believe that. Well, I haven't seen any studies and I don't know any cosmetic chemist who has, because there are none.

But what we do see is free radicals being produced. So if you use an antioxidant, like tocopherol, which is vitamin E, or ascorbyl palmitate, or tetrahexyldecyl ascorbate, they're going to go in the show notes so don't worry about that. 

13:24 Trina Reneá: I don't even think Taylor can spell those words. 

13:27 Rebecca Gadberry: No, it's okay. 

13:27 Trina Reneá: She'll find them. She'll text you.

13:29 Rebecca Gadberry: Just put in “stable vitamin C” and I will know what we're talking about. So in the show notes, just look up stable vitamin C. I'll give you the stable vitamin Cs that are used in sunscreens.

And also other antioxidants. We'll list some out for you. They help to neutralize the free radicals, so there's no problem with them. 

13:52 Trina Reneá: Right. So antioxidants, if you see that on sunscreen, it's like, oh, that's even better because it has those in it. It's a little extra protection from free radical damage.

And antioxidants are…?

14:09 Rebecca Gadberry: Antioxidants neutralize free radicals to make them not dangerous. And free radicals are rogue molecules that go around attacking molecules in our tissues, our cells, in between our cells, even our cell membranes, that cause damage, that is aging, and can cause cancer if you get enough of them.

So using good antioxidants, stable antioxidants that are effective for that helps to neutralize the damage. 

14:37 Trina Reneá: Yes. And I tell people every day of my life that antioxidants are the best thing you can use on your skin to fight aging, because they protect you from all that free radical damage caused by sun and pollution. 

14:52 Rebecca Gadberry: And pollution, yes. 

14:53 Trina Reneá: Wine and all other kinds of things you do to your body.

14:57 Rebecca Gadberry: Both wine and whining when you're under stress. 

15:00 Trina Reneá: Except that the crazy thing is that wine produces resveratrol, and resveratrol is one of the biggest antioxidants. So why does wine…

15:10 Rebecca Gadberry: You’d have to drink 30 glasses of a dark red wine a day to get that amount of resveratrol that you need.

15:20 Trina Reneá: So don't do that, by the way. Don't do that. 

15:24 Rebecca Gadberry: Don’t do that. It's not worth it. 

15:26 Trina Reneá: Take the resveratrol and put it on your skin, rather. Don't put wine on your skin, but put the ingredient resveratrol that's taken from grapes that make wine and put that on your skin. 

15:39 Rebecca Gadberry: Okay. I'll let you go with that. 

15:42 Trina Reneá: I just don't want to tell people out there to drink 30 glasses of wine or to put red wine…

15:45 Rebecca Gadberry: No. And don't rub wine on your skin either. You'll turn purple. 

There's a funny story about that from Cleopatra. No, it wasn't. It was Marie Antoinette. She'd had these big parties. I think she was at Versailles. They would leave all of the glasses on the tables and wherever, and the dregs, the clotty part of the red wine, the solid part would drop to the bottom. And then the servants would go around to collect all of the dregs and she would use that to bathe in. That's where the resveratrol is. 

16:20 Trina Reneá: Oh, my goodness. Is that true? 

16:22 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes, it is true. 

16:23 Trina Reneá: Did it help her? 

16:25 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, she was a noted beauty. Now, I never saw her, so I don't know if she was or not. 

16:31 Trina Reneá: Didn't somebody used to bathe in milk, too? 

16:34 Rebecca Gadberry: Cleopatra, because of the lactic acid in milk. And if it's curdled, it's even better. 

16:40 Trina Reneá: Gross. 

16:41 Rebecca Gadberry: I know. The things we do for beauty. 

16:44 Trina Reneá: That means could you just lay in a big tub of cottage cheese?

16:52 Rebecca Gadberry: I think we're getting off topic here. 

16:56 Trina Reneá: Okay, anyways, back to sunscreen. I think we hit on most of the things that we were talking about, the sunscreen going into your blood, the coral reef situation.

17:15 Rebecca Gadberry: Oh, let's talk a little bit about sunscreens going into your blood. Yes, they have been picked up in the blood. FDA did some studies picking up, especially the chemical sunscreens in the blood. 

The issue is the presence doesn't equal harm. So we don't know if it's harmful or not. If you don't want to wait for those studies to be done, then just stick to your physical sunscreen, zinc oxide and titanium dioxide, or stay out of the sun, or use the sunscreen clothing that Dr. Vicki was talking about in the last episode. 

17:53 Trina Reneá: Okay, cool. All right. Well, I think that rounds up our deep dive for today. We will see you guys on the next deep dive.

18:05 Rebecca Gadberry: We need some bubbles to be released, like we're coming up from the bottom of the ocean, coming up from our deep dive. 

18:13 Trina Reneá: Maybe I'll have a sound effect at the end of the episode. 

18:14 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes. Blub-blub-blub-blub-blub.

18:17 Trina Reneá: Exactly. 

18:18 Rebecca Gadberry: All right, everybody. We hope that this information has been useful. We're coming into the summer, so we really want you to pick the best sunscreens and to take as much sun precautions, especially with the little ones, as you possibly can. 

18:34 Trina Reneá: Yes. All right. Take care and we'll see you guys soon. Thanks for joining. Bye.

18:39 Rebecca Gadberry: Bye. 

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