Wow, this is super ignorant. Humira is a biologic that DOES AFFECT the immune system FOR GOOD REASON. I’m not going to simp for Humira or the company that makes it but your take is just bad, bad, bad. Drugs are approved if they improve quality of life with acceptable risks and each person will react differently and have some or none of the ascribed side effects. Humira is NOT prescribed just for “skin disorders and arthritis”. It is prescribed for AUTOIMMUNE DISORDERS (aka disorders of the immune system) like RHEUMATOID arthritis and CROHN’S disease. I will tell you that people who suffer from those disorders will often times (but not always) prefer to suffer some of the “side effects” of a drug like Humira than the lifelong suffering, pain, and misery that those conditions cause. Humira shuts down the immune system to prevent it from killing yourself slowly and painfully while warping your joints or turning your digestive system into a raw bloody tube that feels like you’re being sandpapered from the inside and in severe cases causing 10+ bloody, painful bowel movements a day. Side effects may be worth it, it’s a case-by-case basis and it’s proven more efficacious than other interventions in a significant number of patients. As you may have read on this blog, sometimes different drugs are more or less indicated for different people (given different genetics and pathologies). Given that this is a science-based blog maybe you should not talk about science that you know nothing about? Anyways, not gonna die on this hill, I was just shocked how ignorant this comment was and I had some spare time to express my distaste for it.

Unfortunately Dr Youn seems to be peddling a lot of the myths that the Clean Beauty movement promotes. I’ve talked about clean beauty here: https://labmuffin.com/clean-beauty-is-wrong-and-wont-give-us-safer-products/

I find that a good way of checking for possible bias from a single government body is by comparing with the regulations from other countries – as you can see from the percentage comparisons, the US and EU have similar allowed concentrations for sunscreens.

As someone with lupus who lives in a very sunny area and has to be very careful with sun protection, I’ll just stick to zinc oxide for now. I have found some that work on my darker skin. But I am eager to try some of these newer filters.

I am particularly keen on getting a sunscreen that I can apply to my body that won’t leave white marks on my black, leather car seats. I’ve only found two that do, but they’re American sunscreens without these newer filters. I heard tinsorb leaves a little white cast still so maybe it’s not the best option – curious if you know if any others that would be good for this purpose while not sacrificing UVA coverage.

I also hope this gets the FDA to fast-track the approval process for the “newer” organic sunscreen ingredients.

There are also plenty of things that were considered harmful that turned out to be fine – electricity, masturbation, women voting…

These sunscreens are also approved in the EU.

Exactly.

Smoking wasn’t considered harmful either, until it was…

The European Scientific Committee for Consumer Safety, who advise the European Parliament on legislative measures for cosmetic ingredients, have published numerous toxicological studies about sunscreens (and many other ingredients) over the years – they make informative if highly technical reading, and always have concise, plain-English summaries at the end.

Agreed fully about newer sunscreens; an added bonus is that they’re more stable than avobenzone and oxybenzone. The USA is the only place in the world where they’re not permitted.

When avobenzone was was developed in 1973, it took five years to become legalised in the EEC and 15 years to become legalised in the USA – it’s clear the wheels have always turned very slowly at the FDA.