Does sunscreen get into your blood?
Effect of Sunscreen Application on Plasma Concentration of Sunscreen Active Ingredients: A Randomized Clinical Trial.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Scientists tested if sunscreen chemicals enter the bloodstream when you put it on your whole body.
No biological mechanisms were identified in this study. This may be an epidemiological, observational, or survey-based study that reports associations rather than proposing causal biological pathways.
Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses
Max 100Randomized Controlled Trials
Max 90Cohort Studies
Max 72Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional Studies
Max 44Case Reports & Case Series
Max 30Expert Opinion & Narrative Reviews
Max 535 / 90
Evidence Score
Participants are randomly assigned to treatment or control groups, minimizing bias. Considered the gold standard for testing whether an intervention causes an effect.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Scientists tested if sunscreen chemicals enter the bloodstream when you put it on your whole body.
No biological mechanisms were identified in this study. This may be an epidemiological, observational, or survey-based study that reports associations rather than proposing causal biological pathways.
Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses
Max 100Randomized Controlled Trials
Max 90Cohort Studies
Max 72Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional Studies
Max 44Case Reports & Case Series
Max 30Expert Opinion & Narrative Reviews
Max 535 / 90
Evidence Score
Participants are randomly assigned to treatment or control groups, minimizing bias. Considered the gold standard for testing whether an intervention causes an effect.
Publication
Related Content
Claims (6)
When people used sunscreen as much as possible in a study, almost 1 in 3 of them got a rash — more than any other side effect.
When you slather on sunscreen with certain chemicals like oxybenzone or avobenzone really thickly over most of your body, your body absorbs a tiny bit of those chemicals into your bloodstream—so much that it crosses a safety alert level set by the FDA, which says, 'Hey, we need to study this more.'
When people use sunscreen heavily, oxybenzone—a common ingredient—gets into the bloodstream more than other sunscreen chemicals, reaching levels more than 500 times higher than what the FDA considers worth checking for safety.
When you apply sunscreen all over your body as recommended, your body absorbs some of the chemicals in it so much that they show up in your blood within a day — more than what the FDA considers a safety concern level.
If you use sunscreen lotion instead of a spray, more of the active chemicals get into your bloodstream—so lotions might leave more oxybenzone and avobenzone in your body than sprays do.