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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Tourists beware – green zealots in the Hawaii legislature have just passed a bill which bans safe, effective sunscreen products. From January 2021, sunscreen products which contain potent ultraviolet blockers oxybenzone and octinoxate will be illegal, if Governor David Ige signs this bill into law.
Most sunscreens may soon be banned in Hawaii, because coral reefs are dying
USA TODAY NETWORK
Ashley May, USA TODAY Published 3:37 p.m. ET May 2, 2018
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The bill, introduced by Democratic Sen. Mike Gabbard, would prohibit the sale and distribution of sunscreen with those chemicals on the island “without prescription from a licensed healthcare provider.”
“Amazingly, this is a first-in-the-world law,” Gabbard, who introduced the bill, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “When you think about it, our island paradise, surrounded by coral reefs, is the perfect place to set the gold standard for the world to follow. This will make a huge difference in protecting our coral reefs, marine life, and human health.”
The bill would go into effect January 1, 2021 if signed by Democratic Gov. David Ige.
Critics of the bill question studies linking the chemicals to coral reef decay and say banning sunscreen could discourage people from wearing skin protection altogether, increasing skin cancer cases. Alexandra Kowcz, chief scientist with the Personal Care Products Council, said the bill rests on a “limited body of scientific research.” Henry Lim, immediate past-president of the American Academy of Dermatology Association, told USA TODAY a sunscreen ban could “create significant confusion” about why wearing sunscreen is important. Plus, there aren’t many effective sunscreen options on the market without these chemicals, he said.
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The full text of the bill is available here.
According to the Wikipedia entry on octinoxate, both chemicals are commonly mixed with Titanium Oxide to produce an effective sunscreen.
… Often used as an active ingredient in sunscreens combined with oxybenzone and titanium oxide for its use in protection against UV-B rays. …
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octyl_methoxycinnamate
This bill in my opinion reeks of Silent Spring style activism. Thanks to questionable research presented in the book “Silent Spring”, and an over enthusiastic response from lawmakers, poor people across the world have been deprived of a safe, effective defence against mosquito borne diseases.
Since DDT was restricted worldwide, millions of people have died of Malaria who would otherwise have had an opportunity to live a healthy life.
The new Hawaiian Sunscreen law in my opinion was passed by green zealots exhibiting a comparable disregard for human health. Thanks to the sunscreen bill, tourists visiting Hawaii who conscientiously heed health warnings about skin cancer may now be at greater risk.
There may be acceptable substitutes for the restricted chemicals – but if the substitutes are better at protecting skin than the chemicals named in this new law, why haven’t they already supplanted the now restricted chemicals? How many people will now risk their health by choosing not to apply sunscreen, or be forced to choose an inferior product? How long will it be until those same green legislators attack the use of substitutes for the banned chemicals?
In 2012, 55,000 people died of skin cancer. While many skin cancers are successfully treated, some skin cancers are insidious and aggressive. Sometimes people don’t realise they are ill until it is too late.
Any rise in this cancer death toll due to misguided Hawaiian efforts to prioritise coral health ahead of human health would be an utter tragedy.
Let us hope Governor Ige has the courage and good sense not to sign this bill into law.
Correction (EW): The 55,000 death toll in 2012 is worldwide, not USA only.
Tourists are not people. They are just revenue statistics in Hawaii.
I think it’s fantastic that factors other than Global Warming are finally being considered to explain the decline in coral reef health! This sunscreen ban is quite possibly a good thing.
The original abstract of the published paper is available at the link below:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00244-015-0227-7
The main mechanism is action is on coral planulae (free swimming planktonic baby coral polyps) and it seems it can also directly damage the DNA of coral by producing AP-sites on the DNA backbone (wondering if it does this in people as well???). The measured concentration of the chemical on actual reefs (Hawaii and US Virgin Islands) was above the LC-50 determined to be harmful.
This makes me think of the Elkhorn and Staghorn corals of the Caribbean. Despite extensive efforts to propagate and replant both of these species on Caribbean reefs they have not yet made a comeback. Perhaps these sunscreen chemicals are affecting larval recruitment??? Just a thought.
It’ll be interesting to see if Hawaii observes any improvements in the health of their reefs after this ban takes affect.
Humans are pretty much second-fiddle to any other aspect of nature. Hawaii has had a fishing ban on tiger sharks for, oh, a couple decades-plus – and now there’re a lot of them and they’re really big. My boss took a vacation out there last summer, and I mentioned this little factoid to him before he went – partly to tease, because he mentioned going sail-boarding and snorkeling.
First day he got there someone got hit by a tiger shark.
It’s that way in Florida with alligators too.
Good. It is about time. What? Do you all think that coral die-off is from global warming? Get real. It is from the crappy sun screen. Put on a hat and a long sleeve shirt and sit in the shade. Ban that crappy sunscreen in the Caribbean too.
Unless Hawaii has found some really special way of disposing of sewage and other domestic waste then banning sunscreens is not going to solve their problem. The elected officials are looking for a scapegoat but in this case this might be choking the golden goose. I love it when elected officials, whose almost sole industry is tourism do things to hamper tourism. Elected officials at all levels HATE having to deal with proper collection, treatment and disposal of domestic sewage and urban stormwater. There is no easy, inexpensive answer to the problem. Florida continues to fact that problem even though debated now for decades. Hawaii went from about 50 thousand residents in 1950 to 1.5 million last year. That is not counting 8.9 million tourist. A 100 gallons per resident and slightly more for tourist. I sat through a technical discussion of the problem just in and around Honolulu three decades ago.
Just wear UV resistant swimwear. In other words, cover up.
Nothing like a UV resistant Burkini, I say!
Agreed! We desperately need a return to puritanical bathing costumes! I am always having to cover up my chubby when I go to Waikiki beach. My blue balls need some relief
http://assets.rebelcircus.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/HEADER-P6.jpg
Regarding Waikiki beach:
I recall reading somewhere that Waikiki beach used to be a huge coral reef. One day the locals decided it was interfering with their surfing, so they bulldozed it.
Does anyone have any information on this?
Yes, the geoengineering of Waikiki to improve the beach for tourism and the waves for surfing would be considered a monumental crime against the environment by 21st century standards:
Waikiki Beach, Oahu, Hawaii: History of its transformation from a natural to an urban shore
http://dlnr.hawaii.gov/occl/files/2013/08/Wiegel-2008-ShoreAndBeach-Waikiki-history.pdf
Indeed. Best article about Waikiki in this tread. Fascinating reading your link.
Glad you enjoyed the secret history of HI.
In the mid-90s, my GF was an event planner in Honolulu, with resort clients on the other islands. I got to know the dark underbelly of the romanticized isles. From human sacrifice platforms on the Kona Coast to the rampaging environmental degradation by the Polynesians and subsequent human invaders, to include mass extinctions of native flora, fauna and for all I know fungus and microbes.
Compared with what has gone before, sunscreen hardly registers on the environmental radar.
Wow! What a thoroughly depressing read.
Friends recently went to Fiji and stayed at a new, high-end place where everything had been bulldozed and dredged and an artificial reef built. After just three years, they said the brand new reef was amazing, teeming with fish and color.
Build it, and they will come.
Oh? Do you have a link for that?
Excellent initiative on the part of the Hawaiian legislators and I believe the Australian legislators may be following suit. Keep up the good work guys!
Hi all. I usually agree with articles posted here, but this one is OFF BASE.
My wife has a marine biology background. She has been scuba diving since her early teens (in the early ’70’s she was the youngest girl to ever be SCUBA-certified in southern California…)
The link between sunscreen and coral toxicity was demonstrated decades ago, as I recall first by the Japanese. The 2008 study (quoted several times in this thread) is the first I can recall that provided very solid evidence for exactly how sunscreen ingredients cause the problem, and just how sensitive coral (and other marine life) is to these chemicals.
Think about the data benben quoted above from one of the studies. These ingredients have been shown to have an effect at levels as low as 0.062 µg/L! That’s 62 parts per Trillion
What it means in practical terms:
Well trained SCUBA divers have known for many decades that one should never touch coral because it is easily killed by substances on our skin; my own training (1989, Philippines) included that warning.
When we first heard about the link between sunscreen and coral bleaching, they didn’t know exactly *why* it happened, but the researchers were confident enough that divers began to avoid sunscreen use, since they do get *close* to coral, even if they don’t touch it.
Yes, massive use of sunscreen by beachgoers, and undegraded chemicals in other pollution sources are also very significant. Yet divers using sunscreen actually bring the chemicals right to the coral.
Some complain that if it were that bad, all the coral would already be dead. Well, no. It isn’t that bad in all of the oceans, and existing currents *do* carry away the chemicals and dilute them. Take a look at this map of Maui: 0 ppt in some places, much more in others. http://www.haereticus-lab.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Photo-Oxybenzone-2.jpg
Bottom line: there’s unquestionably a problem.
This is a positive development. When did sunscreen replace clothing for the melanin challenged anyway? Manage your exposure in the sun. I was on the big island 3 times and managed with the ‘safe’ sunscreen, umbrellas for places like Puna beach which is not a snorkeling spot and when going to the snorkeling spots mostly managed my exposure with time, clothing and shade. I have to say if you start with that approach, the results are far superior to relying on some dubious chemicals that have about as much efficacy as a statin for cholesterol levels. This will burn the stupid people off the beach. They can stay on the resort pool decks and do their social strutting and preening. The effluent from there can be treated and discharged with the least impact possible.
I’d like to ask that this be read by Anthony himself before anyone writes it off. I’m fully on his side and have been from the start and only want to help the cause. The important stuff is at the end. Thanks. I added that after, and now here what I wrote.
Great article, So worthy of comment.
Aloha brother.
This is a very topical subject that we will see spread as another green disease imposed on us all, like the protection of the totally unendangered alpha-predator shark species (bull and tiger) whom we are told we must allow our children to be eaten by because that is the only way the greens can save the world. Like the super effective practice of cutting virgin’s hearts out and throwing the sacrificed victims into the volcano, these social scientists know that the greater the extremity of their call for sacrifice, the more the masses will take seriously and fear the catastrophe the priests both threaten and profess to know how to alleviate. All they need to do to make the people accept it is to repeat and repeat it, and keep calling for even greater sacrifice, and control opposition by control of education and information. So, yeah, the call to risk skin cancer by not using sunscreens is perfect in its ludicrous extreme for the purpose of mind manipulation BECAUSE every skerrick of common sense and intelligence we all have, cries out that the parts per trillion of a product so harmless at a cellular level that the giant cosmetic houses’ labs have approved it to be rubbed into rich women’s faces, risking billions in law suits if it is found dangerous to their cells, and which obviously floats on the surface, nowhere near the coral, and it is beyond belief when so little of the product goes into such enormous quantities of water etc. But everyone thinks that if they keep calling for it, what they say must be true and the danger extreme if such dire straights have to be gone to.
That’s the important point in this. The climate war is now run by a different set of scientists and has nothing to do with the science of climatology.
On coral, it’s bleaching and the conditions needed for it’s ability to survive and prosper, my knowledge is limited to a sparse amount of literature on it and 44 years and thousands of hours diving on the fastest growing reef in the world, one which also has an incredible variety of different coral species, so just about all major types and not just one are there for me to observe.
My reaction to bleaching was, “Bleaching!? A problem!?” Parts of our reef bleach every year, through various causes, and they recover within a month every time. And when you look at things like the big study on the Great Barrier Reef, they say the same thing in it, but the press release conclusion at the end stresses a danger of what might happen, if they are not funded to survey it, meaning, in reality, we should pay them to continue producing the same result. The reef is in no danger under the present conditions with which Australians have been protecting it. These people think the people who dig holes in the Queensland sun for them should pay them to play around in tropical lagoons provided with every toy they wish for and the service they are actually providing is no more use than surveying a hole that is already dug and filled in. They, the ones who know best that the bleaching scare is a hoax, are the ones being paid to perpetuate it.
This whole sunscreen thing is a joke we can all see through, yet they will surely force it on us everywhere.
Why the article uses 55,000 out of the millions of global deaths per year, as some type of thing for concern and that you tend to have concern yourself is an eye-opener. A staggering omission was that there was not one mention of any danger to the Hawaiian people, who are the obvious potential victims, who will be in the sun their entire lives. Please realise it paints statesiders as being all in tears and fury about the 7 million tourists per year who will average maybe 10 days each of exposure. Also, looking at it, it appears a bit weak that the fear about the likelyhood that, of 55,000 worldwide deaths, out of 6 billion people, some tragedy will fall on possibly one of the 7 million tourists who are only exposed for 10 days, and it is about as sympathy inspiring as using 5 deaths caused by the flood of the Yangtze River to anyone but an American tourist, if no one knew that previously.
The bottom line is that the tragic victim of the piece, statistically, is zero, especially when you discard the Hawaiian people as meaningless and non existent. Even the rest of the world appears meaningless in the way the 55,000 had to be footnoted as worldwide and not American.
The point in mentioning that has nothing to do with my detestation and fight against political correctness and its insidious takeover of our minds through our guilt in continuously chastising ourselves for thinking the old “bad” word before searching for the new flavour of the month word. My reason for doing so has to do with climatology and is to highlight the Northern Hemisphere geocentricity that appears to be blinding you all to the fact that the Northern Hemisphere plays no part in global climate. The Atlantic Ocean is not the centre of the universe. You basically totally ignore the South.
The answer to everything is contained in the 100,000,000 tons of frigid water that passes any given point every second that is circulating round the planetoid size ice block, occupying everything up to 40°S and reaching all the way to the sea floor and driven along by the spinning of the Earth.
I have no idea why the sole regulator of Earth’s temperature is ignored. I mean, don’t you hate it and have a huge urge to reject any idea that doesn’t come from one of your post doctoral peers!
All I ask is stuff like how does the alarmist’s “warm” Antarctic meltwater get through the CIRCUMPOLAR Current retaining any of it’s heat or freshness after spinning round the bottom 40s 50s 60s, some of the 70s and the ice for who knows how long before it gets back out into the world?
Then you have to ask how the rest of the world’s heat could ever have the slightest chance of getting through the circulating water and winds without having it’s heat bled off long before it could get anywhere near the ice.
Am I correct in saying it does have an affect on global climate seeing that before it was there, average ocean temperature was 21°C and now the Earth’s heat content, the thing they say is increasing 3°C, the ocean, is reflected in average ocean temperature being about 6°C, and that it is, also, the known cause of ice being present in today’s world?
It just sucks in any amount of heat from the rest of the world and throws it back out cold. Antarctica is like the bottom of the abyss, a totally isolated climate of it’s own, which highlights the idea of separate climates making up a whole, but the whole or global climate could just about be called an invention.
The SOUTHERN Oscillation, in reality, cools the world in one phase and cools it even more in the other. That should be stressed in every mention of it.
In order to make the world hotter or colder, polar amplification proves that can only be done if something affects Antarctica, and seeing Antarctica cannot be affected by the rest of the world, that points to global climate being driven by things that affect Antarctica. That’s the place to look and we know the few options.
Like Copernicus, all you have to do is observe it all then get the idea that possibly the Earth spins, and everything fits. Funny that that’s where the current gets all its gargantuan energy, and the CO2 thing being all about energy, there we find, apart from the heat energy contained in the ocean, you are all ignoring the thing that no doubt possesses the greatest amount of energy in the world.
A look at a map of the world from where climatologists should be looking will show you that that’s what drives the Gulfstream and all major currents. Our globe spins brothers. That thermal haleine action in the North Atlantic little offshoot couldn’t drive a nail in comparison. Start by seeing the Agullus Current being water that is pushed by the spinning Earth’s circumpolar current and you see how it is diverted by West Africa, across toward Brazil and despite the Corialis Effect it is then pushed, by its confrontation with the hip of Brazil, across the equator into and driving, along with the Corialis Effect, the Gulfstream, which we all know heads across to Africa and circles, and the part that heads north is only a minor offshoot, regardless of how much importance you pay it because it affects your climate with its landlocked sea at it’s pole.
They may have tagged the sinking cold salty water up there and followed it to the Pacific but did they even look for the tags down in the frigid giant waves and storms of the Great Southern Ocean, which you only believe is not the biggest ocean in the world because of lines drawn on a geocentric piece of imagination we call a map..
All your years of study and I learnt that from a NGS map of Antarctica and a couple of paragraphs from Asimov’s 1980 edition of his Book of Science. Plus looking into the curiosity that some scientists no longer believe in Polar Amplification in Antarctica when, because of the ice cores and other proxies it surely occurs there. That led to being sure Antarctica controls it all, and it all fits. I have spent a decade of self education on it and spent maybe a year all told just sitting thinking about how each change to one thing changes other things and what those changes are and what they change. As mental exercise, climate is top notch.
So the models may well be correct about what the increase in CO2 should do and us deniers are correct in following the observations and denying there is any significant warming, and that makes everyone is correct. It’s just that when the greenhouse gases heat the rest of the world, it’s ocean, the circumpolar current takes in the warm water circles it round bleeding it to space in the cold dark winter, in degrees Kelvin to space at 0°K. Space doesn’t care if it is 250°K or 274°K, it bleeds. It never gets near Antarctica and Antarctica doesn’t bleed more than it receives from the sun, it’s only source of heat, so it doesn’t get colder. It’s reached equilibrium.
That agrees with the melting Arctic because of greenhouse gases and black soot. It agrees with everything. It is there to see and examine. It answers every question and arguement. It imbibes an overall understanding.
Global Warming should be happening, but it is not. And the reason why it is not happening is the same reason why there is ice on our planet. A radiator powered by the spin.
What do you reckon?
Read, and appreciated. – Anthony
I read the paper DOI 10.1007/s00244-015-0227-7 a bit and was blown away. There is something materially wrong. The dose-response rate is perfectly logarithmic. This means that in a test tube at 0.2 part per thousand 80% of coral cells die (which is not surprising, that is about 3% sunscreen/water mix), yet lowering the concentration by a million times still kills 10% of cells. (Figure 10) This is unheard of. It’s as if drinking 2litres of 180 proof alcohol kills 80% of people, and drinking 0.000002 l of alcohol kills 10 %! Saying that its hard to believe is putting it mildly. Double-blind studies need to be done to try to replicate these incredible results. If they are replicated (there is a whole thing out now about non-repeatable experiments) would garner a huge prize for the authors. While dose – response curves are usually plotted on log – linear graphs the classic S shape occurs over perhaps one decade of dose, not five. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dose–response_relationship. In addition the error bars look small. Also they fitted the data to a straight line, where it should have been fitted to an S curve, which, when combined with a proper double blind analysis of the data would find a safe concentration in water something on the order of 100x higher than was measured in the reef water tested.
Tom, I suspect you’re not taking into account the biology. A few thoughts:
1) Your reference link actually shows a dose-response curve that visibly occurs over four decades, not one.
2) A given “stressor” doesn’t have just one dose-response curve. The curve in the link you nicely provided identifies a minimum “effective” dose (or whatever)… but a different curve would be used to quantify a different effect such as toxicity or mutagenic factors. There could easily be many orders of magnitude in between.
3) We’re not dealing with a simple chemical for which dose-response applies in the first place! These substances promote a viral infection in coral, which (by definition) has an exponential impact.
(At the moment, I relate this to another disease with many orders of magnitude “dose response” relationship — Celiac. Incredibly tiny amounts of gliadin (a gluten protein) can cause tremendous harm… yet the body can tolerate quite a lot more without it being truly toxic.
I am a resident of Hawaii. I swim, snorkel and scuba the West Hawaii reefs. We had a significant coral bleaching events in 2014 and 2015. It looks like a coral graveyard out there. From a NOAA report “Alarmingly, in the present report, the researchers found that 68% of West Hawaiʻi’s shallow coral reefs and 60% of its deep reefs were partially or fully bleached in October of 2015. Between 50 and 99% of the corals died due to the bleaching event at some sites surveyed along West Hawaiʻi. Since ocean waters are expected to continue to warm, bleaching events are expected to increase in frequency and severity.” Nature has a way of adapting to change given a chance, albeit extinctions happen. We need to give the reefs every chance to recover and adapt to our changing ocean as acidification and warmer temperatures kick in. And the science has been coming in from all over the world and being published in highly regarded journals; oxybenzone has lethal impacts on juvenile corals and also disrupts development in other invertebrates as well as vertebrates (fishes).
I’ve noted that some comments painted the issue as an Us vs.Them dynamic, with Them being the corals. Let’s talk about that. We need coral reefs for the well-being of the human race. They protect the coastlines from the damaging effects of wave action and storm surge, and as a biodiverse ecosystem, they assist with carbon and nitrogen fixing, and provide shelter for many marine organisms. They provide the breeding grounds for fish spawns and serve as a nursery for many juvenile fish before they fledge to the open sea, and thus are the foundation of the fishing industry. Billions of people worldwide rely upon the ocean for food and jobs. There is no separating the human race from the natural world; we need a healthy planet.
And a little bit about the human health aspect in all this. Oxybenzone is an endocrine disruptor. It acts like estrogen and suppresses mightily those androgenic hormones that make for manly men. And guess what? It gets absorbed through our skin. The research is starting to come in documenting that it messes up development in humans as well as promoting endometriosis,metastasis of breast cancer, inhibiting sperm viability, and causing a serious birth defect. And by the by, it’s not such a great sunscreen. It’s not nearly as good as zinc oxide which is broad spectrum (blocks UVA and UVB). But it is cheap to make and corporations make a lot of money selling products that they know are harmful to people and to reefs. Those CEOs didn’t choose between corals and humans. They chose between harming humans and corals and getting a bigger Christmas bonus. Your health vs. a Lexus. Surprise. You lose.
The reality is that the Hawaii Legislature has done it’s homework. Hawaii is leading the way toward a healthier world for the corals and a healthier world for people. Aloha.
As my mom the chemist used to say (quoting Paracelsus), “the dose makes the poison.” A big enough dose of just about anything makes it poisonous, and a small enough dose of anything is safe. The issue with pollutants is almost always quantifying the effects.
Many studies are flawed, or just turn out to have been wrong. Too often people do experiments with unrealistic levels/doses, or under unrealistic conditions, and detect harm, and then just assume that a smaller dose is also harmful, just less so. But that is very often wrong. E.g., drinking a gallon of water all at once might well kill you (and if you’re a small person it would probably kill you), but drinking a cup of water all at once is not 1/16th as harmful.
The obvious natural “testbeds” for the effects of pollutants on corals would be the lagoons in coral atolls. Because they contain relatively small amounts of water in fairly enclosed spaces, “doses” are going to be much less diluted there than in the open Pacific. So if you want to learn more about the effects of various pollutants on coral, I’d start with studies of atolls. If an effect hasn’t been proven in atoll lagoons, I wouldn’t worry about it in the open Pacific. If an effect has been proven in atoll lagoons, then it is worth further examination w/r/t the open Pacific.
However, most sunscreen doesn’t end up in the ocean. Even if oxybenzone turns out to be as damaging to corals as some people think it is, does it make sense to ban its use by farmworkers in the cane fields? Why not continue to permit it as an ingredient in non-waterproof sunscreens, which swimmers never use anyhow?
They should ban tourism in general not only because of dangerous products that are being used but also all the fossil fuel that supports the tourism industry. They should ban all transportation to and from the islands that involve the use of fossil fuels.
LA to Honolulu by sail in under four days:
https://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/2017/05/16/record-time-from-los-angeles-to-honolulu/
Phaedo^3:
Anyone who believes the amount of sunscreen washing off the bodies of all the tourists in the world is significant in any way compared to the volume of the ocean is in no way different from those people who believe in homeopathy……because there is about as much left after wave action gets through with it.