Chemical Recall: Unexpected Benzene Found in Sunscreen & Other Personal Care Products
Plus, Your Yearly Reminder To Check Your Water Report & Another Water Testing Solution
Don’t forget to apply your sunscreen! This sentiment has been drilled into all of us when it comes to summer skin protection.
Well, three batches of Banana Boat products (a popular sunscreen) have been voluntarily recalled thanks to an internal review that found trace levels of benzene in them. See the full press release about it here.
You can find out whether your sunscreen has been recalled by looking for the lot codes on the bottom of the can and comparing it to the recalled product list.
The following three batches of Banana Boat Hair & Scalp Spray SPF 30 in 6-ounce size were recalled:
UPC number 0-79656-04041-8, lot code 20016AF, December 2022
UPC number 0-79656-04041-8, lot code 20084BF, February 2023
UPC number 0-79656-04041-8, lot code 21139AF, April 2024
The company says it will reimburse consumers who have purchased a recalled product. Consumers with questions regarding this recall may contact Edgewell Personal Care at 1-888-686-3988 Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Consumers may also visit www.bananaboat.com for more information and to learn how to receive reimbursement for eligible products.
The Bigger Picture
Yes, benzene is a known carcinogen.
According to the CDC: Benzene (C6H6) is a highly flammable, colorless liquid that evaporates quickly into the air. It is harmful to the eyes, skin, airway, nervous system, and lungs. Benzene can cause blood cancers like leukemia. Workers may be harmed from exposure to benzene. The level of exposure depends upon the dose, duration, and work being done
Benzene is not a listed ingredient in any Banana Boat products, but the review showed that unexpected levels of benzene came from the propellant that sprays the product out of the can.
Interestingly, scientists continue to find benzene in more and more consumer products from hand sanitizers and deodorants to dry shampoos and jock itch sprays.
Where is the benzene coming from? And, is it a new problem, or just one that no one had noticed? These questions were posed in a December 2021 Chemical & Engineering News article, which also points out that benzene is found in petroleum and most kinds of smoke, and its derivatives are ubiquitous in natural and synthetic materials.
In 1948, the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, said in a toxicological review that “Inasmuch as the body develops no tolerance to benzene, and as there is a wide variation in individual susceptibility, it is generally considered that the only absolutely safe concentration for benzene is zero.”
The only safe concentration for benzene is ZERO.
Most contaminated products are spray formulas propelled by butane or propane, derived from petroleum. A December 2021 recall notice from Proctor & Gamble says, in part, “our review showed that unexpected levels of benzene came from the propellant that sprays the product out of the can.” Notice a pattern?
Another potential source of benzene contamination is petroleum-based thickeners called carbomers. These are acrylic acid polymers sold in cosmetic and pharmaceutical grades that don’t use benzene, but some suspect that manufacturers of personal care products may have substituted less-pure industrial grades.
Ethanol is another potential contaminated ingredient, used as the primary ingredient in many hand sanitizers.
Much of the ethanol that went into sanitizers was redirected from ethanol produced for fuel, so benzene may have entered through cross-contamination of reaction vessels or transportation equipment.
Although it may be hard to determine how benzene got into the consumer products, the why is clear: “It’s there because somebody got sloppy; because in the manufacturing process, there were shortcuts.”
Determining whether benzene has been contaminating these products for years isn’t possible without data on older batches.
As with most contaminants, you can only find what you’re looking for and many of these large companies aren’t looking or releasing their data to the public.
The antidote to this problem is more independent screening. If these companies are committed to quality in their products, they should invest in making sure their products are safe.
Last year, Johnson & Johnson voluntarily recalled five NEUTROGENA® and AVEENO® aerosol sunscreen product lines after internal testing identified low levels of benzene in some samples of the products.
The message is clear: we’ve got a benzene problem. Stop turning customers into guinea pigs! Carcinogens are never cool.
Reminder: Check Your Water Report
Each year, the EPA requires community water systems to deliver a Consumer Confidence Report, also known as an annual drinking water quality report, to their customers. These reports provide Americans information about their local drinking water quality. Did you get yours this year?
Reports must be sent by your water supplier each year by July 1.
If I did not receive my report, how do I get a copy?
You can either call your local water supplier or you may also find your report using EPA's CCR search tool.
What type of information is in the report?
The lake, river, aquifer, or other source of the drinking water;
A brief summary of the risk of contamination of the local drinking water source;
The regulated contaminant found in local drinking water;
The potential health effects of any contaminant detected in violation of an EPA health standard;
An accounting of the system's actions to restore safe drinking water;
An educational statement for vulnerable populations about avoiding Cryptosporidium;
Educational information on nitrate, arsenic, or lead in areas where these contaminants may be a concern;
Phone numbers of additional sources of information, including the water system;
EPA's Safe Drinking Water Hotline number 1-800-426-4791.
State reports may have state specific information however, they must also include the basic information outlined in the federal requirements.
If you don’t pay your own water bill because you live in an apartment, condo, or rental property or you get your water from a private ground water well, you don’t receive a CCR. Renters can contact their building manager or search online to see if your CWS publishes a report.
To learn more read the EPA's Understanding Your Annual Water Quality Report.
The best way to understand any kind of contamination in your water system is to pay attention to these annual reports. So many people glaze over them! Help me spread the word and tell a friend or neighbor about this critical report.
A Truly Smart Device
Julius Lucks, a professor of chemical and biological engineering, and postdoctoral fellow Khalid Alam and doctoral candidate Kirsten Jung created a device to test water for 17 different contaminants. The technology, nicknamed ROSALIND in honor of DNA pioneer Rosalind Franklin, can assess water safety and quality with just a single drop. Using "molecular taste buds," when the test detects a contaminant, the tubes glow green.
The end goal of the project is to produce an inexpensive hand-held device that will allow folks to test their own drinking water, on the spot and continuously monitor the water source over time.
Read more about the development of ROSALIND 2.0 in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.
Erin Brokovch for US AMBASSADOR TO UN! Over a year ago Erin Brokovich had publicized to the attention of many of her followers staggering data on approaching global infertility crisis that leads us promptly to human extinction by 2045 along with dramatic increase in environmental illnesses that are not referred by the medical industry with such term, paradoxically. For example, according to other studies, every 2nd man and every 3rd woman is to be knocked down by cancer this decade! And other illnesses are to be on the rise, making human existence more and more intolerable for those who would manage to be born, unless we collectively commit to the fast and effective changes to establish global shield from chemical warfare against population.
Since then, the interview with the author of visionary book COUNT DOWN Dr. Shanna Swan got illustrated by Mark Dooling to the attention of his large fan base. Of course, that is a great accomplishment in helping break the silence about the outrage of the death row for humanity, but it is still a drop in a bucket, sadly...
The change of irrelevant health and safety standards is still not merely in the works in the form of global strategy, while we got A YEAR closer to COUNTDOWN’2045. And where could such environmental insanity lead us?
But I have managed to make a measurable step in propagating THE HARD TO GRASP THE EVIDENCE FOR THE ROOT CAUSE OF SUCH PATTERN OF SELF DEFEAT - SENSORY COMPLICITY TO CHEMICAL HAZARDS, and most significantly, THE COUNTERPOINT for SENSORY DEACTIVATION AND ZOMBILIZATION - emotional reawakening of senses and feelings through employing music instinct.
Without changing this trend of loosing senses that inform our self preservation instinct and serve as the foundation for prioritizing capacity, none of the inconvenient truth will be inconvenient enough to majority of population.
We’ve got very challenging recovery path ahead of us and only for a very limited time - self transformation on the global scale from zombilized race of self proclaimed Homo “Sapiens” to Eco aware Homo Conscius. And it would be hopeless, but this time our civilization is in possession of the ancestral gift of brain recalibration toolset of music and the arts. However, this joyful medicine must be applied on the global scale and with no delay. Self evolutionary recovery from practicing personal and collective cognitive dissonance, caused by the blind spots, resulting from evolutionary relics in o mind is where our victory over Goliath of environmental insanity begins.
And of course, no moment may pass without detoxing our personal and communal dwellings, as well as our food, water and air. These are our human rights and they may no longer be violated by those, who may believe that financial wealth can protect anyone from indiscriminate environmental illnesses. Such delusion is both absurd, lacking self compassion and cruel to all.