The most common cancer in America is also one of the most preventable — if people simply had access to effective sunscreen. We spend $9 billion a year treating the cancerous effects of sun damage, not to mention the billions we spend to soothe the sun’s more minor effects. So many people get skin cancer that the statistics aren’t even reportable to cancer registries. But nearly all skin cancer is the result of sunlight and UV exposure, which means it is preventable.
But that’s the (often greasy) rub: in the United States, sunscreen is locked inside a bureaucratic vault built in 1938, guarded by the Food and Drug Administration as if it were an experimental medical treatment.
The FDA’s Precautionary Paralysis
Americans don’t hate sunscreen. We hate American sunscreen. Thick, greasy, chalky — our “broad spectrum” formulas barely block the most dangerous rays, meaning damaging UVA rays still get through. Even when you’re wearing “good” American sunscreen, you remain vulnerable to aging-accelerating sunspots and cancer-causing skin damage.
Why? Because American sunscreen is trapped in a regulatory time warp. Since the late 1990s, the FDA has refused to approve a single new UV filter. Europe and Asia now use more than 30 modern filters, with similar safety standards. The US? Just 17 — most of them older, less effective, and less pleasant on the skin. Foreign formulations reach beyond visible sunburns well into the UVA wavelength, offering superior protection from the rays that cause 90 percent of visible aging and much of the skin cancer burden. That’s protection Americans are being deliberately denied.
Susan Swetter, MD, is exactly the person you’d want to ask about that kind of thing. She’s a professor of dermatology and the physician in charge of cutaneous oncology (skin cancers) at Stanford University Medical Center. She was blunt: “The best sunscreens abroad contain Tinosorb, Mexoryl or Uvinul — none of which are currently FDA-approved.”
The reason is almost comical. Because sunscreen prevents cancer, the FDA classifies it as a drug, not a cosmetic. Approving a new UV filter drug here requires decades of animal testing, multi-million-dollar studies, and years — sometimes decades — of regulatory limbo before a new ingredient can hit US shelves. The result of this “precautionary principle” is not more safety but less. By locking out proven, widely used ingredients like bemotrizinol — sold abroad for more than 20 years under EU standards without incident — the FDA has left Americans with weaker protection, higher cancer rates, and ballooning medical costs.
It’s inaction in the name of public health, and the costs are becoming more visible.
“The sunscreen issue has gotten people to see that you can be unsafe if you’re too slow,” economist Alex Tabarrok told NPR. Regulation by delay doesn’t always prevent harm. In many cases, it guarantees harm.
Consumers vote with their wallets, importing bottles of Korean and European brands through web outlets, Reddit fora, and TikTok recommendations. New formulas are chemically superior: some are sweat-proof even in humid conditions, others defend skin against air pollution. Australian sunscreens are among the best in the world, and their SPF claims are rigorously checked and enforced. When sunscreen feels better, looks better, and works better, people are more likely to wear it.
Around the world, innovation races ahead where sunscreen is treated as skincare.
The Incentive to Do Nothing
Industry has little reason to push the FDA to move faster. The cost of approval can reach $20 million, yet the reward is just 18 months of exclusivity. After that, competitors can copy the formula, leaving innovators to cover all the upfront costs.
Congress prompted the FDA to reconsider its classification and speed up approvals (in November 2025’s continuing resolution, but also 2020, 2014, 2011, and 2005 to absolutely no effect). If bemotrizinol wins FDA approval in 2026, it will be the first new filter in a generation.
Swiss-Dutch skincare company DSM-Firmenich, branding the compound as PARSOL Shield, has petitioned and lobbied the FDA for nearly a decade.
US companies keep recycling the same tired formulas. L’Oréal, Neutrogena, and others already sell better versions of their products abroad. Sephora is reportedly eager to supply better products to US buyers, but will have to settle for intentionally formulated inferior alternatives until the FDA moves. For 20 years, the discriminating skin care buyer could pay extra to import the good stuff.
And speaking of paying a premium for imported goods…
Tariffs Make a Bad Problem Worse
In 2024, the Trump administration slapped a 25 percent tariff on Korean imports, including cosmetics like sunscreen. Though the rate has seesawed since — sometimes 15 percent, sometimes zero — the uncertainty has sparked panic buying and price spikes. Retailers warn that if the full tariff returns, they’ll have no choice but to pass costs onto consumers.
Now, the administration has also eliminated the de minimis exemption, which used to let individuals import up to $800 in goods tariff-free. Without that protection from costly customs duties, millions of American consumers who rely on direct-to-door K-beauty orders will see the cost of reliable skincare soar overnight.
The Cost of Bureaucracy and Protectionism
First, the FDA blocks innovation, so American products are distinctly inferior. Reform (say, to streamline FDA approvals, remove required animal testing, or approve new UV filters) moves slower than skin cancer spreads across an unprotected brow. Now, ill-conceived trade policy threatens to choke off the only affordable workaround consumers have left.
Bipartisan glimmers exist. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Mike Lee have called for regulatory reform to streamline FDA approvals and allow modern testing methods without the requirement for mandatory animal testing (funny enough, we could rely on a 30-year longitudinal study on the human populations of Europe and Southeast Asia).
Busybody-bullies make it their job to get in the way of consumers’ choices for themselves and entrepreneurs’ attempts to meet those needs. As usual, the twin idols of American bureaucracy — safety theater and national security hobgoblins — generate fear, feed lobbyists, and prop up campaign funding, but produce the opposite of their intent.
The results of FDA protection:
Not safety, but exposure — to the sun, to higher prices, to worse health outcomes, and an estimated 8,000 preventable deaths a year. Medicare and Medicaid are likely to pay billions annually to treat skin cancer that could’ve been prevented, had the FDA not, well, prevented that.
American standards force companies here and elsewhere to produce deliberately inferior products at higher prices than those freely available to buyers in other countries. American manufacturers are excluded from a booming global skin care market.
One of our best tools for reliable, risk-free cancer prevention is being treated as a luxury good.
