Somewhere in your beach bag there is a bottle of SPF 100. You bought it because 100 sounded like a lot more protection than 30. That is how numbers work almost everywhere else in life.
It is not how they work here. The Wall Street Journal walked through the arithmetic on Monday, and the gap is much smaller than the label suggests. At SPF 30, a sunscreen already blocks 97% of the UVB rays that burn you. SPF 100, despite the name, blocks 99%.
Two percentage points. Not triple.
The fight over the big number
This is not a settled argument, and it would be dishonest to write it as one. Some studies, the Journal reports, suggest SPF 100 does give a meaningful leg up on SPF 50. Other health advocates argue the opposite — that a big number on the bottle creates a false sense of security, and people who feel covered might not reapply as often as they should.
Regulators have been chewing on this for fifteen years. The FDA has toyed with capping advertised SPF values since 2011, arguing that numbers stretching toward 100 are misleading. The cap was first proposed at SPF 50, then raised to 60. The agency never made a final decision.
Which leaves the choice with you and the bottle. And the dermatologists quoted in the paper are refreshingly unbothered about which one you pick.
A new ingredient, and a long wait
The other piece of news is that the FDA approved a new sunscreen ingredient — bemotrizinol, or BEMT. It is the first new one the agency has approved since the late 1990s. Dermatologists told the Journal the decision is long overdue, which is a polite way of saying it has been widely used for decades in Asia and in Europe while we waited.
Here is the part worth reading slowly. Aug. 9 is the date companies can start using the ingredient in their products. It is not the date it appears at your drugstore. “To get new products to shelves very quickly, it really depends on the company,” Bank of America analyst Anna Lizzul said. “Innovation on some of these products can take a year.”
Two familiar names have said something, and neither has said much. Kenvue, Neutrogena’s parent company, confirmed it plans to add bemotrizinol to its collection but didn’t say when exactly. CVS Health said it is having conversations with its store-brand sunscreen supplier about using the ingredient. That is a maybe and a conversation. Don’t go looking for it on Aug. 10.
SPF has been turning up in moisturizers, foundations, concealers, powders and lip balms. In stores like Ulta and Sephora, twice as many tinted moisturizers and foundations with SPF launched in the first five months of this year as in the same period a year earlier, according to data provider Circana.
Extra SPF is helpful. But experts told the Journal not to treat most beauty products as one-and-done sun protection. For many foundations and powders, Dr. Helen He said, you would need several more layers than you normally would to hit the SPF advertised on the package.
If you’re heading outside, dermatologists recommend applying sunscreen in addition to SPF cosmetics.
So the bottom line from the paper is boring, which is usually a good sign. Dermatologists recommend daily use of an SPF 30 or higher and reapplying every two hours. They also make the point that matters most: exposure to UV rays, a known carcinogen, is far more dangerous than any specific sunscreen choice. And in extreme heat, sunburns are more dangerous still, because they limit the body’s ability to cool itself off — which is not a small footnote in a California July. The number on the bottle was never the thing protecting you. Using it on schedule was.
Not every health page has to route back to a product, and this one doesn’t. There is no ticker tag here on purpose: Kenvue confirmed it plans to add the new ingredient but wouldn’t say when, and CVS Health is only having conversations with its supplier; neither committed to a date, and a maybe is not an investment case. What this page is actually good for is the household that spends its afternoons outside — SPF 30 or higher, reapply every two hours, and the SPF in your makeup is not one-and-done sun protection. The planning echo is the same discipline we ask for everywhere else in the book: the cheap, boring, calendared thing done on schedule beats the impressive number on the label. That is true of sunscreen, and it is true of the review you keep meaning to book. Bring the statement in July, not December.