Benzene is an organic solvent, a type of substance used in the preparation of drugs or the cleaning of equipment in the pharmaceutical industry. Some of these solvents, including benzene, have a volatile nature and pose a danger for human health in higher-than-regulated concentrations. For benzene, this concentration is >2 parts per million (ppm). Studies in factory workers show that inhalation, ingestion, and skin or eye contact with benzene could be dangerous for one’s long-term health.
According to the ICH, a European medical agency that helps control pharmaceuticals, “Since there is no therapeutic benefit from residual solvents, all residual solvents should be removed to the extent possible to meet product specifications, good manufacturing practices, or other quality-based requirements.”
But sometimes, these solvents are not completely removed in the manufacturing process, and they end up in products. This is exactly what we see in some of the sunscreens and after sun products, some of which are manufactured by reputable brands like Neutrogena, EltaMD, and Banana Boat. For a full list of sun care products tested by the lab, click here. Valisure, the company that initiated the study, filed a petition for the recall of the sunscreens that contained high concentrations of benzene.
Overall, the presence of benzene in cosmetics seems to vary from batch to batch. Besides, all the studies that involved the carcinogenic activity of benzene were based on factory workers who inhaled and worked with this dangerous chemical for long periods of time. Compared to this, the exposure one gets by using sunscreen or hand sanitizer that contains 2 ppm of benzene is nothing.
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