Should you wear sunscreen every day, or cover up and skip it?

Judy ChoBCHN, FNTP · board-certified holistic nutritionist and functional nutritional therapy practitioner; no clinical licence recorded

Stop using chemical sunscreen. Cover up, check the UV index, take your sun off-peak, and treat burning as the body's own stop signal.

What it rests onFour stated grounds: sunscreen sales and melanoma rates rose together after 1978; sunscreen blocks the UV that causes the burn but not the infrared that penetrates deeper, removing the warning without removing the exposure; many filters are endocrine disruptors, citing the Environmental Working Group's finding that about 5 percent of more than 1,400 sunscreens met its standard; and blocking UV blocks vitamin D synthesis. Her replacement is behavioural, credited on the page to Dr Elizabeth Plourde.

Source: nutritionwithjudy.com ↗

Leslie BaumannMD · dermatologist, cosmetic dermatology and appearance medicine

Wear it daily. Some filters are controversial, so choose a mineral sunscreen; that is a reason to switch, not to stop.

What it rests onHer stated bottom line is 'you need sunscreen on your face every day and on your body when exposed to the sun. Some SPF ingredients are controversial, so play it safe and choose a mineral sunscreen.' She separates absorption from harm: reporting the FDA absorption work, she states that 'just because an ingredient is absorbed into the bloodstream does not necessarily mean that it is harmful or unsafe'. On the EWG she objects to opacity rather than to the concern, noting of the 15 May 2024 statement that the EWG 'does not provide any details of the study they did on 1700 SPF products'. She also states that even a sunscreen on her own concern list is better than none.

Source: skintypesolutions.com ↗

Overview

Both are talking to general adults, so they really are answering the same question, with two things worth keeping straight. Baumann's article says nothing about melanoma trends and nothing about vitamin D, so she is not answering those two of Cho's four arguments. And Cho's article is specifically about chemical filters and says infrared and red light can be beneficial, so she is not against sun protection in general.

Where they agree

More than the framing suggests. Both are wary of chemical filters: Cho says stop using them and Baumann says 'I prefer mineral sunscreens for my patients'. Both accept oxybenzone and octinoxate as the compounds of concern. Both treat sun exposure as something to be managed by behaviour as well as by product. The genuine dispute is what the wariness licenses: switching filters, or stopping.

What would settle it

Cho would move on human data separating filter exposure from everything else behind the melanoma trend, and on a controlled comparison of covering up against daily mineral sunscreen for skin cancer. Baumann would move on hormone outcome data in people at the amounts actually applied. Worth knowing for both: each article has been edited since it was first published, so neither reads quite as its date suggests.

Should you wear sunscreen every day, or cover up and skip it?

What the experts say

Overview

Where they agree

What would settle it

Practice does not pick a winner here