It’s important to protect yourself from harmful UV rays, but choose your sunscreen carefully. Not only are some sunscreens dangerous to you, but they’re harmful to coral reefs as well.
Many sunscreens contain chemicals that can do more harm than good. When you go swimming, you leave traces of those chemicals in the water. For coral reefs, this is a particularly large problem as the chemicals in sunscreen can harm them. Some resorts in areas with coral reefs may actually restrict the kind of sunscreen guests can use to only mineral and non-nano sunblocks!
If you can switch sunblocks to help the environment, you can do it to protect yourself, too. To do this, choose sunblocks made with zinc oxide and titanium dioxide (non-nano); and if you can, avoid skincare or other sunscreen products that include methyl paraben, oxybenzone, and octinoxate.
Coral reefs deserve our consideration when it comes to the chemicals we expose the environment to. They play a crucial part in providing 25% of all marine life with food, protection, and a hospitable ecosystem. In fact, one of the chemicals, oxybenzone, can seriously damage developing coral and even bleach the coral within minutes of being exposed.
How does that happen?
14,000~ tons of sunscreen are absorbed into coral reef-adjacent bodies of water each year thanks to swimmers. The sunscreen on our bodies washes off as we swim, meaning if we’re not careful with what we put on ourselves, we could potentially spread unsafe chemicals to our environment.
See the infographic below from the Conservation Institute
Learn more at: https://www.conservationinstitute.org/sunscreen-may-be-dangerous/