Cancer-causing chemical benzene found in sunscreen and hand sanitisers – ‘There’s no safe level’, says public health expert

Four decades ago, the United States government used rarely deployed emergency powers to reduce workers’ exposure to benzene, a chemical linked to a five-fold increase in the risk of developing potentially deadly leukaemia.

After a landmark study in 1977 highlighted its health risks, employers and manufacturers were forced to limit the industrial compound in their workplaces. Yet just within the past few months, elevated levels of benzene have appeared in some hand sanitisers, and an analysis by an independent testing laboratory revealed its presence in some sunscreens and after-sun skin soothers.

While the amounts found in skin products have been relatively small – far less toxic than the doses that resulted in blood cancers and regulatory action – they’re still spurring alarm from public health experts, especially as people are set to head outside for the warm summer months and children get slathered in sunscreen. More questions are being raised about how benzene was allowed into the common lotions, and how to keep it out.

“There’s no such thing as a safe level of exposure, and that’s especially true for children,” said Philip Landrigan, director of the Global Public Health Programme and Global Pollution Observatory at Boston College in the US who has studied toxic chemicals and human health for 40 years. “Benzene actually causes DNA mutations, it’s a potent carcinogen. Even a small dose can set in motion the chain of events that can lead to a cancer a few years later.”

Valisure, an independent testing lab in New Haven, in the US state of Connecticut, found some widely used sunscreens and after-sun products contained up to 6 parts per million of benzene. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standard for benzene in sunscreen is unclear, but it earlier set a temporary limit related to the pandemic of two parts per million for hand sanitisers.