10-07-2025
New questions in the sunscreen SPF saga
Sydney Pead: Sun safety is drilled into Australians from a young age, but the protection offered by some of the most popular sunscreen brands is in question, after consumer group Choice released test results showing many are not meeting their SPF claims. Today, the ABC's Rachel Carbonell on the industry backlash, her investigation into an overseas testing lab, and whether we can trust the SPF on the bottle. I'm Sydney Pead. On Gadigal Land in Sydney, this is ABC News Daily.
Sydney Pead: Rachel, in this country, we are basically raised being told to put on sunscreen any time you leave the house, protect yourself from the you've been following this story that's cast doubt on how accurate the SPF labels on some of Australia's most popular sunscreen brands. It's just been this massive controversy, hasn't it?
Rachel Carbonell: It has. It's been huge. I knew people would have strong reactions when the sunscreen SPF testing came out, but I was still surprised by just how passionate people are about their sunscreens in Australia, which is just as well, considering how high our skin cancer rates are, I guess.
Sydney Pead: Mm, absolutely. And now, your investigations have raised even more questions, this time about one of the labs used by sunscreen brands for SPF certification. So we'll come to that in a moment. But first, just take me back. This whole saga really kicked off last month, didn't it? With a report from CHOICE, the consumer advocacy group. So what exactly did it find?
Rachel Carbonell: So last month, consumer group CHOICE released the SPF test results for 20 popular sunscreens. It went to an independent Australian lab and had all 20 of them tested for their SPF and found that 16 of them failed to meet the SPF claim on the label. Now, those results varied quite a lot. Some got an SPF result in the 40s and 30s, but a bunch of them, seven, I think, had SPFs in the 20s, including a couple of Cancer Council products. And the one that really took everyone by surprise was the Ultra Violette product, which tested at four. And that's a product called Lean Screen SPF 50 Plus Mineral Mattifying Skin Screen. Now, this was also the most expensive product that CHOICE tested, and it retails for about $52 for 75 mils from the brand's online store. So look, all of those brands did come back saying that they'd followed all of the regulations, which meant that they had done their own independent testing for the SPF, showing that their sunscreens were compliant, which is something that all sunscreens have to do before they're allowed to sell their sunscreens in Australia. And I guess that's where the controversy really kicked off, because people are legitimately wondering how there can be such huge differences in SPF results between different labs. So after the results came out, CHOICE did ask the Therapeutic Goods Administration or the TGA, which regulates sunscreens in Australia, to go and test these products themselves.
Sydney Pead: Right, and CHOICE actually said that because the results of Ultra Violette's product were so low, they needed to send it to get another test at a German lab to validate those results. Is that right?
Rachel Carbonell: That's correct. So they sent it off for a smaller validation test at a well-known German lab, and that sample received an SPF of 5. So that's one more than the testing in Australia. So pretty much in line with the original testing.
Sydney Pead: That's shockingly low for a sunscreen that's claiming to have an SPF rating of 50 plus. The company, Ultra Violette, was not happy about that finding.
Rachel Carbonell: Ultra Violette hit back pretty hard at the CHOICE testing.
Ava Chandler-Matthews, Ultra Violette co-founder: Obviously, I've seen all of the press about the CHOICE testing, and I guess I just wanted to give you a bit of an understanding of why we're disputing these claims.
Rachel Carbonell: One of their founders, Ava Chandler-Matthews, went direct to the customers on social media saying that the results were not accurate and emphasising that the brand had done its own SPF testing at an independent overseas lab and received a result of more than 60. Ultra Violette then went and tested that sunscreen again. So that original result would have been the result they got before they put that sunscreen on sale in Australia. So they went and tested it again, and it got a result of over 60 again.
Ava Chandler-Matthews, Ultra Violette co-founder: So we now have three SPF tests done on 30 people that show where we've got a consistent result within one point of each other, one or two points of each other, at an over 60.
Rachel Carbonell: It's worth noting that they went back to the same lab that they'd previously used, not a different lab. Now, that's not breaking any rules. They're just trying to show the public that they've done their testing and it's coming back at what they say it is. She also made the point that, you know, CHOICE is not the TGA or the consumer watch dog.
Ava Chandler-Matthews, Ultra Violette co-founder: What we do know about CHOICE is they're not a regulator. They are not the ACCC. They are not the TGA. They are not the ones who approve sunscreens.
Rachel Carbonell: And she said that, you know, for what it's worth, you know, she still has faith in that product and she still uses it herself.
Sydney Pead: And so Ultra Violette's objection to CHOICE's testing was that their product was decanted before testing, and that process might tamper with the efficacy of the product. Is that right?
Rachel Carbonell: Yeah, look, for everyone who was following along on the socials, this whole issue got quite heated and quite detailed. And there was a whole debate about decanting sunscreens out of their original packaging and into something else, whether that be for testing or if you're travelling and you're doing that with your sunscreens and raising questions about whether or not this might, you know, mess with test results. CHOICE hasn't said a lot publicly since it released the SPF results, but it did come back and provide some clarity on what it did in relation to the testing when it sent it off. Very keen for people to know that it followed some pretty strict protocols set by the lab. So they said it was decanted and sealed and labelled and transported, according to the lab instructions, in amber glass jars to limit any degradation of the ingredients. And that for the Sydney tests that were done, that was all done inside of an hour.
Sydney Pead: OK, Rachel, can you walk me through what actually makes a sunscreen 50 plus and what testing a brand has to do to be allowed to print that on the bottle?
Rachel Carbonell: SPF stands for sun protection factor, and it's a measure of how long it takes for skin to burn under the sun's rays or an imitation of the sun's rays with sunscreen on compared to that same exposure on bare skin. Working this out is actually done with human test subjects, which surprises a lot of people. To be allowed to sell sunscreen in Australia, sunscreen makers have to have done what's called a 10 person in vivo test, which is just a panel of 10 human volunteers. So in the test, the volunteers have a patch of unprotected skin exposed to UV radiation using a solar simulator and a patch of protected skin exposed to those rays. And then the readings from that go into a set of calculations which give an individual SPF value for each of the 10 test volunteers. And then the mean of all of those values is the final SPF for the product. The Therapeutic Goods Administration is the body that regulates sunscreen in Australia, and they don't do their own SPF testing. They can't do it in-house. And the TGA also has no oversight of the third party testing labs that sunscreen makers go to to certify the SPF in their products before they go to market. It is known in the industry that there will be differences between test results between labs. But I suppose the big question is how much variability is acceptable between these labs. I mean, the difference between Ultra Violette's own testing and Choice's testing is more than a whole SPF 50.
Sydney Pead: OK, and you've been investigating this even further, and you found that at least half the sunscreens that failed to meet their SPF claims, according to Choice, had their original certification conducted at the same overseas lab.
Rachel Carbonell: That's right. So we found at least eight of the 16 sunscreens that Choice found didn't meet their label claim used a lab called Princeton Consumer Research. So they include products from, well, three Cancer Council products and of course, the Ultra Violette sunscreen that we've been talking about. There was also two sunscreens that met their label claim in Choice's testing that used Princeton Consumer Research. But again, the PCR or the Princeton Consumer Research test results for those products were much higher than Choice's testing, which was done here in Australia.
Sydney Pead: And Rachel, Ultra Violette published their SPF results from the PCR lab, both the original ones they submitted to the TGA and the second round conducted after Choice's report. You've shown these results to some experts. What did they have to say?
Rachel Carbonell: Yeah, we showed the Ultra Violette results and four sets of results for Cancer Council to some experts here in Australia and overseas. And all of those experts said that the results were unusual and that they had concerns about them. To explain this, you need to understand a little bit more detail about the testing again. Sorry to get technical on you. But with each of those 10 volunteers that all receive their own SPF value, you would expect there to be a bit of variability across the 10 subjects, according to those experts. But many of the test reports that we saw, they showed very little variation. And to explain that, for example, in one test report, nine of the 10 test volunteers got exactly the same SPF result down to the decimal point. In another few of them, we saw eight volunteers got exactly the same SPF result down to the decimal point. In the case of Ultra Violette's, it was two different sets of SPF numbers across 10 participants. So one of the experts that we spoke to from the Germany-based Normec Schrader Institute, Dr. Mathias Rohr, he said that the results were unlike anything that he'd seen in his whole career, testing more than 1,000 products a year. Now, it's worth noting at this point that this is the institute that CHOICE went to to do the validation test of Ultra Violette's products. So technically, you know, you could say, is there a conflict of interest there? There's no suggestion that there is. But we went to a bunch of other experts for that reason, just to make sure we were getting a spread of people and making sure we were talking to people who weren't in any way connected to CHOICE's testing. And they all held the same concerns about that lack of variability. They were all very careful to point out that it isn't impossible for these results to line up like that, just that it's unlikely and that they didn't really have an explanation for how that was happening.
Sydney Pead: And you did go to the lab, you went to PCR and asked them. So what did they say?
Rachel Carbonell: They did acknowledge that this kind of uniformity of SPF results for the test volunteers is uncommon, but did say that it can happen, especially with high performing products in a controlled test environment and that their testing processes meet the standard, the regulation, their testing processes are robust and they're verifiable. We spoke to a couple of the technical directors there, and, you know, both of them were saying, look, it is less common for that kind of lack of variability to happen. But, you know, it does happen. And it just so happens that that's what the test results look like in the test reports that the ABC was looking at.
Sydney Pead: It seems a little unusual. How have the TGA and the brands that used this lab responded to your investigation?
Rachel Carbonell: Look, a few of the sunscreen brands have told us that they are now going to another independent lab. So somebody that is not who they originally tested with and basically not Princeton Consumer Research. And so that suggests to me that those sunscreen brands that are doing that, which includes Cancer Council and Ultra Violette, are taking it seriously enough to go to a third lab. The TGA says that they are investigating the Choice findings and they'll take regulatory action as required. They themselves have pointed out that, you know, there can be variability between labs and that that's not uncommon. But you would have to presume that they were looking into it. The Cancer Council pointed out, as did a few other sunscreen brands, that Princeton Consumer Research is a really commonly used facility for SPF testing across the industry for sunscreens that are sold in Australia. And that's certainly what our investigation bore out. Like we've named the ones that we could get the reports. But, you know, there are others out there that are using it. And the Cancer Council, interestingly, said that the Choice findings have raised questions about the accuracy of SPF test results and that the Cancer Council is taking that seriously and investigating.
Sydney Pead: Yeah, a lot of questions for the brands themselves, but what should consumers make of all of this? Because Ava Chandler-Matthews made the point in her video responding to the Choice results that this whole saga could have eroded trust in all sunscreen.
Ava Chandler-Matthews, Ultra Violette co-founder: It's not just about us. It's just about, you know, knowing that the consumer can trust the sunscreens that they're wearing.
Sydney Pead: Does she have a point there?
Rachel Carbonell: Look, she does have a point, and I really hope that's not the case. And so do a lot of the organisations that work so hard in the skin cancer space in Australia. This is a really important issue, and it is really, really important that consumers and Australians don't lose faith in their sunscreens. Organisations like the Melanoma Institute are really keen to point out to people that the difference between an SPF 50 and SPF 25 is probably not as great as some people might think. And so an SPF in the 20s is still going to provide quite a lot of protection for people. Australians have a bit of a habit of not putting enough sunscreen on. And so, you know, if you've got a sunscreen that you think is potentially underperforming, the advice is not to throw it out. I think the advice is just to make sure you're putting plenty of it on and that you're reapplying regularly.
Sydney Pead: That's right. I mean, Australia has the highest rate of melanoma in the world. So as you say, something is better than nothing. But I suppose we'll have to see how this pans out so they can get to the bottom of exactly how protected we are.
Rachel Carbonell: That's right. I think we're going to have to leave it to the experts for now and wear long sleeves, put on your sunglasses, put on your hat, seek shade and hope that somebody can sort out the labelling issues so that people know that what it says on the sunscreen bottle is what you're actually getting.
Sydney Pead: Rachel Carbonell is the ABC's National Health Equity reporter. This episode was produced by Kara Jensen-Mackinnon and Sam Dunn. Audio production by Adair Sheppard. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sydney Pead. ABC News Daily will be back again on Monday. Thanks for listening.
