WASHINGTON – The Environmental Working Group today released its 20th Annual Guide to Sunscreens, and after evaluating nearly 2,800 SPF products, the most comprehensive review in the guide’s history, the news is mixed.
The sunscreen market is measurably better. Finding a safer and more effective sunscreen that works for your skin and your routine remains important in making sun protection a lifelong habit. The product you will actually use is the right one.
“The market has improved. The number of harmful ingredients like oxybenzone has nosedived, the percentage of products that are mineral sunscreens has nearly tripled and consumers are more informed than ever,” said David Andrews, Ph.D., chief science officer at EWG.
“But the fundamental problem remains unsolved: Most American sunscreens fail to deliver adequate UVA protection, critical for reducing skin cancer risk, including melanoma.
“That is not a marketing problem but a failure of sunscreen companies to develop the data showing their ingredients are safe,” said Andrews.
Twenty years ago, most Americans had no independent, science-based resource to consult when buying sunscreen. The market was flooded with harmful chemicals, misleading SPF claims and products that offered little meaningful protection against the radiation most responsible for skin cancer.
This year, 550 of the 2,784 SPF products EWG evaluated meet its criteria for both ingredient safety and balanced UV protection.
Sixty-two sunscreens bear the EWG Verified® mark. To qualify, they must:
- Meet EWG’s highest standards for safety and ingredient transparency
- Satisfy EWG’s standard for ultraviolet A, or UVA, and ultraviolet B, or UVB protection
- Surpass both U.S. and European requirements for UVA protection.
In total 130 SPF products, including moisturizers and lip balms, are EWG Verified.
20 years of measurable progress
“Wearing any sunscreen at all is key to reducing health concerns about excess UV exposure,” said Andrews.
“But not all sunscreens are created equal. EWG’s guide is a trusted, science-based resource that consumers can turn to every year to find the sunscreens that offer the strongest broad-spectrum protection without concerning ingredients.”
When EWG launched the first Guide to Sunscreens, in 2007, oxybenzone – a chemical linked to hormone disruption and environmental harm – appeared in 70% of non-mineral sunscreens on the market. Today it’s an ingredient in just 5%.
Vitamin A, which can degrade in sunlight and potentially accelerate rather than prevent skin damage, has plummeted from 41% of sunscreens to just 2%.
Mineral sunscreens using zinc oxide and titanium dioxide, the only active sunscreen ingredients the Food and Drug Administration has proposed as generally recognized as safe and effective, have grown from 17% to 47% of products EWG reviews.
These are not small victories. They represent a sea change in how an entire industry formulates its products, driven in significant part by consumers armed with better information.
A promising new ingredient on the horizon
For the first time in more than a quarter-century, EWG has cause for optimism about what is coming to U.S. sunscreen shelves. In late 2025, the FDA proposed classifying bemotrizinol, a UV filter used safely since 1999 in European and Asian sunscreens, as safe and effective for the U.S. market.
“Bemotrizinol is the most significant development in American sunscreen regulation in 25 years, and EWG is proud to have pushed for its inclusion in U.S. products for more than a decade,” said Alexa Friedman, Ph.D., senior scientist at EWG.
Bemotrizinol provides several advantages, including:
- strong broad-spectrum UVA and UVB protection
- greater stability in sunlight than avobenzone, currently the only chemical filter in the U.S. that provides meaningful UVA protection
- minimal skin absorption
- potential for combination with zinc oxide for even greater UVA coverage, unlike avobenzone.
If the FDA finalizes its proposal, American consumers who prefer non-mineral sunscreens will have a better option for the first time in nearly three decades.
“But one new ingredient does not fix a marketplace that has been stuck in neutral for a generation,” said Melanie Benesh, EWG vice president of government affairs.
“The FDA proposed meaningful reforms to sunscreen regulation in 2019 and again in 2021 – stronger UVA standards, SPF value limits, better labeling, updated safety data requirements.
“None of those reforms have been finalized, and sunscreen manufacturers have failed to provide the FDA with the safety data it needs to approve better UV filters,” she said.
“Congress must force the issue by setting enforceable deadlines for companies to submit the required data and empower the FDA to remove noncompliant ingredients from the market,” Benesh added.
Most sunscreens still fail on UVA
Progress is real. But the gap in American sun protection has not closed.
EWG’s peer-reviewed research, published in Photodermatology, Photoimmunology & Photomedicine, tested 51 U.S. sunscreens and found that products delivered on average just 59% of their labeled UVB protection and only 24% of the UVA protection implied by their SPF labels.
UVA radiation penetrates deeper into the skin than UVB, is a driver of melanoma and photo-aging, and causes damage year-round through car and office windows, on cloudy days and at high altitudes.
Melanoma cases are projected to rise 10.6% this year, according to the American Cancer Society. The rate of new melanoma cases has tripled since the 1970s.
The problem is compounded by misleading high-SPF marketing.
In perfect laboratory conditions, an SPF 50 product blocks 98% of UVB rays. SPF 100 blocks 99%. The difference is negligible, yet manufacturers continue to push SPF 70, 80 and 100+ products using chemical boosters that may inflate the number without improving UVA protection.
SPF tests triggered a regulatory reckoning in Australia, where independent tests found that one product labeled SPF 50+ tested at just SPF 4. The scandal triggered government investigations and mass product recalls. The U.S. has the same testing inconsistencies, but the FDA has not acted.
Europe adopted more accurate, objective laboratory testing protocols in 2024.
The U.S. still relies on subjective in vivo tests, which involves technicians visually judging skin redness on human subjects, a method so inconsistent that the same formula can produce results of SPF 51 at one lab and SPF 28 at another.
“The SPF number on your sunscreen bottle doesn’t tell you the whole story,” said Friedman. “Consumers who reach for the highest SPF because they want maximum protection are often getting the least reliable UVA coverage of all.
“That is a public health problem, and the FDA has the authority and the obligation to fix it,” she added.
Undisclosed “fragrance” in 36% of SPF products
More than one in three sunscreens EWG evaluated in 2026 list undisclosed “fragrance” on the label. That word can conceal hundreds of chemicals, including allergens, hormone disruptors and carcinogens.
For daily sunscreen users, those exposures accumulate. A 2025 peer-reviewed paper found the cumulative health effects of repeated fragrance ingredient exposure remain poorly understood and inadequately regulated. Congress set a 2024 deadline for the FDA to address fragrance allergen labeling in cosmetics, a rule that would have covered moisturizers with SPF. The agency missed it.
There is no equivalent fragrance disclosure requirement for sunscreens, so consumers have no way to know what is hidden behind that word on a product label.
“‘Fragrance’ on a sunscreen label doesn’t describe a single ingredient,” said Jilly Senk, science analyst at EWG Verified.
“When you apply that product every day – to your face, your children’s skin, year after year – those undisclosed exposures add up. The EWG Verified mark exists precisely because the law does not require the transparency consumers deserve,” she said
How to find a sunscreen that works for you
The 2026 Guide to Sunscreens also offers important lists, including a selection of the top-rated recreational sunscreens, the safest for kids and babies, moisturizers with SPF and lip balms. They’re the products EWG scientists ranked the highest for their overall protection from UVA and UVB rays and other factors.
EWG also recommends “12 Bang for Your Buck Kids Sunscreens,” all priced at less than $20.
Here is EWG’s guidance for choosing a sunscreen that works and that you will use:
Choose mineral protection. Look for zinc oxide, which provides stable, balanced UVA and UVB coverage. EWG also recommends titanium dioxide for daily use.
Choose lotions or sticks over sprays. Sprays raise concerns about inhalation and often result in uneven coverage, especially in wind.
Skip high SPF numbers. Stick with SPF 50 or lower. Products with SPF 70, 80, or 100+ may not provide better UVA protection and can create a dangerous false sense of security.
Avoid chemicals of concern and undisclosed fragrance. Ingredients like oxybenzone and octinoxate are linked to hormone disruption and environmental harm. Undisclosed fragrance masks potentially harmful chemicals.
Use EWG’s tools. Search EWG’s Guide to Sunscreens, use the EWG Healthy Living app to scan products while you shop, and look for the EWG Verified mark, which requires sunscreens to exceed both U.S. and European UVA protection standards.
Finding a safer and more effective sunscreen that works for your skin and your routine is the final step in making sun protection a lifelong habit. The time of year does not matter. The weather does not matter. Every day is a sunscreen day – and the right product you will actually use.
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The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.
