Consensus Study Report

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This activity was supported by a contract between the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization or agency that provided support for the project.

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-309-27283-4
International Standard Book Number-10: 0-309-27283-1
Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.17226/26381
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2022917247

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Suggested citation: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Review of Fate, Exposure, and Effects of Sunscreens in Aquatic Environments and Implications for Sunscreen Usage and Human Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26381.

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COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF CURRENTLY MARKETED SUNSCREENS AND POTENTIAL HUMAN IMPACTS OF CHANGES IN SUNSCREEN USAGE

Members

CHARLES A. MENZIE (Chair), Exponent, New York

MARK R. CULLEN (Vice-Chair), Stanford University (Retired), Palo Alto, California

SCOTT BELANGER, Procter & Gamble (Retired), West Chester, Ohio

KEVIN CASSEL, University of Hawaii Cancer Center, Honolulu

DIRK ELSTON, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston

KAREN GLANZ, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

CHRISTOPHER P. HIGGINS, Colorado School of Mines, Golden

REBECCA D. KLAPER, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

CARYS L. MITCHELMORE, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Solomons

ROBERT H. RICHMOND, University of Hawaii at Manoa

EMMA J. ROSI, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Millbrook, New York

KANADE SHINKAI, University of California, San Francisco

PAUL WESTERHOFF, Arizona State University, Tempe

CHERYL M. WOODLEY, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Charleston, South Carolina

Staff

EMILY TWIGG, Study Director, Ocean Studies Board

VANESSA CONSTANT, Associate Program Officer, Ocean Studies Board

SUSAN ROBERTS, Director, Ocean Studies Board

CLIFFORD DUKE, Director, Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology

CAROLYN SHORE, Senior Program Officer, Health and Medicine Division

TRENT CUMMINGS, Senior Program Assistant, Ocean Studies Board (until June 2021)

GRACE CALLAHAN, Program Assistant, Ocean Studies Board

OCEAN STUDIES BOARD

Members

CLAUDIA BENITEZ-NELSON (Chair), University of South Carolina, Columbia

MARK R. ABBOTT, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts

ROSIE ‘ANOLANI ALEGADO, University of Hawaii at Manoa

CAROL ARNOSTI, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

AMY BOWER, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts

LISA CAMPBELL, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

THOMAS S. CHANCE, ASV Global, LLC (Retired), Broussard, Louisiana

DANIEL COSTA, University of California, Santa Cruz

JOHN DELANEY, University of Washington (Retired), Seattle

TIMOTHY GALLAUDET, Ocean STL Consulting, LLC, North Beach, Maryland

SCOTT GLENN, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey

MARCIA ISAKSON, The University of Texas at Austin

LEKELIA JENKINS, Arizona State University, Tempe

NANCY KNOWLTON (NAS), Smithsonian Institution (Retired), Washington, District of Columbia

ANTHONY MacDONALD, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey

GALEN McKINLEY, Columbia University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, New York, New York

THOMAS MILLER, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Solomons

S. BRADLEY MORAN (Ex-Officio Member), University of Alaska Fairbanks

RUTH M. PERRY, Shell Exploration & Production Company, Houston, Texas

DEAN H. ROEMMICH, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, California

JAMES SANCHIRICO, University of California, Davis

MARK J. SPALDING, The Ocean Foundation, Washington, District of Columbia

PAUL WILLIAMS, Suquamish Indian Tribe, Seattle, Washington

Staff

SUSAN ROBERTS, Director

STACEE KARRAS, Senior Program Officer

KELLY OSKVIG, Senior Program Officer

EMILY TWIGG, Senior Program Officer

MEGAN MAY, Associate Program Officer (until January 2022)

ALEXANDRA SKRIVANEK, Associate Program Officer (until February 2022)

VANESSA CONSTANT, Associate Program Officer

SHELLY-ANN FREELAND, Finance Business Partner (until January 2022)

THANH NGUYEN, Finance Business Partner

KENZA SIDI-ALI-CHERIF, Senior Program Assistant (until April 2022)

ELIZABETH COSTA, Program Assistant

GRACE CALLAHAN, Program Assistant

BOARD ON ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES AND TOXICOLOGY

Members

FRANK W. DAVIS (Chair), University of California, Santa Barbara

ANN M. BARTUSKA, U.S. Department of Agriculture (retired), Washington, District of Columbia

DANA BOYD BARR, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

GERMAINE M. BUCK LOUIS, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia

FRANCESCA DOMINICI, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts

GEORGE GRAY, The George Washington University, Washington, District of Columbia

R. JEFFREY LEWIS, ExxonMobil Biomedical Sciences, Inc., Annandale, New Jersey

LINSEY C. MARR, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg

MARIE LYNN MIRANDA, University of Notre Dame, Indiana

R. CRAIG POSTLEWAITE, U.S. Department of Defense, Burke, Virginia

REZA J. RASOULPOUR, Corteva Agriscience, Indianapolis, Indiana

JOSHUA TEWKSBURY, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panamá

SACOBY M. WILSON, University of Maryland, College Park

TRACEY JEAN WOODRUFF, University of California, San Francisco

Staff

CLIFFORD S. DUKE, Director

RAYMOND A. WASSEL, Scholar and Director of Environmental Studies

KATHRYN GUYTON, Senior Program Officer

NATALIE ARMSTRONG, Associate Program Officer

LAURA LLANOS, Finance Business Partner

LESLIE BEAUCHAMP, Program Assistant

THOMASINA LYLES, Program Assistant

BOARD ON HEALTH SCIENCES POLICY

Members¹

SHARON TERRY (Chair), Genetic Alliance

DAVID BLAZES, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

ROBERT CALIFF, Duke University, Verily Life Sciences

ARAVINDA CHAKRAVARTI, New York University Langone Health

LINDA HAWES CLEVER, California Pacific Medical Center; RENEW

BARRY S. COLLER, The Rockefeller University

BERNARD A. HARRIS, JR., Vesalius Ventures

MARTHA N. HILL, Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing

FRANCES E. JENSEN, Medicine Translational Neuroscience Center, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine

STORY C. LANDIS, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (Emerita)

FRANK R. LIN, Johns Hopkins Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health

SUZET M. McKINNEY, Sterling Bay

LYNNE D. RICHARDSON, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Health System

DIETRAM SCHEUFELE, University of Wisconsin–Madison

UMAIR A. SHAH, Harris County Public Health

ROBYN I. STONE, LeadingAge

MATHEW WYNIA, University of Colorado Denver

Study Staff

CLARE STROUD, Senior Director (from July 2022)

ANDREW M. POPE, Senior Director (until July 2022)

CAROLYN SHORE, Senior Program Officer

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¹ Roster reflects membership and affiliations in 2021.

Reviewers

This Consensus Study Report was reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in making each published report as sound as possible and to ensure that it meets the institutional standards for quality, objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process.

We thank the following individuals for their review of this report:

Although the reviewers provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations of this report nor did they see the final draft before its release. The review of this report was overseen by JUDITH E. McDOWELL, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and DANNY D. REIBLE (NAE), Texas Tech University. They were responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried out in accordance with the standards of the National Academies and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content rests entirely with the authoring committee and the National Academies.

Preface

It is now broadly recognized that aquatic environments—both marine and fresh water—have undergone substantial degradation over recent decades and remain under threat. Global and local stressors combine to alter and degrade the condition of these vital ecosystems. The recent National Academies consensus study on Interventions to Increase the Resilience of Coral Reefs¹ is one example that highlighted the immense threat from global climate change to coral reefs, and described how local conditions, among other things, can influence reef resilience to this global-scale threat.

Without a doubt, a variety of compounds present in the mixture of chemical pollution entering our environments are a contributing cause of ecological decline. An emerging target of possible concern has been ultraviolet (UV) filters, which notably comprise the “active” ingredients in sunscreens. This collection of slightly over a dozen diverse compounds can be carried into the water on human skin when used to protect the skin from injury from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. In addition, these compounds can enter waterways with the wide array of other chemicals in our wastewater. It was to better understand the potential risk of UV filters on our already threatened aquatic environments, and the potential consequence to human health should sunscreen usage or composition be modified, that the National Academies was tasked by Congress and funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to undertake this consensus study.

Addressing environmental and human health issues increasingly involves holistic thinking and approaches that integrate human and ecological considerations. All consensus panels of the National Academies are comprised of teams of scientists representing the scope of expertise needed to address complex questions and the range of differing perspectives when alternative approaches to those questions have been articulated. The demands of this task stretched the typical bounds of even that norm: On the one hand, we needed experts in the many disciplines pertinent to environmental assessment in aquatic environments of all types. On the other hand, we needed expertise in dermatology, cancer prevention, behavioral science, and human epidemiology. We were challenged in our work by the COVID-19 pandemic, which precluded the face-to-face interactions that most readily facilitate such diverse groups to coalesce around the statement of task, and fully realize the potential of team science. Using our first sessions to fact-find with invited guests from around the world—perhaps the one advantage of Zoom!—to present both evidence and perspectives, we tiptoed our way into the water. We were then faced with integrating several workstreams into a coherent narrative with all of its supporting data. While challenging, our work showed

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¹ See https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/interventions-to-increase-the-resilience-of-coral-reefs.

that this was possible, with concerted effort to reach a shared understanding. Especially important to achieving our goals were ongoing and indepth exchanges concerning the applicability, strengths, and limitations of the underlying science relevant to the task.

In the end, we have met the challenge set forth by the statement of task, and are pleased to present it to EPA and to the public. Of course, this would have been impossible without the incredible efforts of our staff team—led by Emily Twigg and Vanessa Constant—as well as the support of the staff and leadership of the National Academies, more broadly. We are worn out after this 18-month journey, but also proud to present the pages that follow, with the hope—indeed, expectation—that they will accelerate the effort to meet the dual goals: safety to the environment and protecting humans from the noxious effects of the sun.

Charles A. Menzie, Chair
Mark R. Cullen, Vice-Chair
Committee on Environmental Impact of Currently Marketed
Sunscreens and Potential Human Impacts of Changes in Sunscreen Usage

Acknowledgments

This report was greatly enhanced by a number of public information-gathering meetings during the study process. The committee would like to thank all of the experts who presented during these meetings: Eric Adams, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Adewole Adamson, The University of Texas at Austin; Tom Augspurger, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Larry Barber, U.S. Geological Survey; Tim Bargar, U.S. Geological Survey; Lisa Bishop, Friends of Hanauma Bay; Lee Blaney, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Autumn Blum, Stream-2Sea; Narrissa Brown, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Emily Burns, Personal Care Products Council; Annaleise Conway, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences; Michael Cummings, Hawaii Department of Health; Iain Davies, Personal Care Products Council; Scott Dyer, LeTourneau University; Michelle Embry, Health and Environmental Sciences Institute; Michael Gonsior, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science; Adele Green, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute; Patricia Holden, University of California, Santa Barbara; Dawn Holman, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Kurunthachalam Kannan, NYU Langone Health; Michael Kaplan, Melanoma Research Alliance; Arturo Keller, University of California, Santa Barbara; Marc Léonard, L’Oréal Advanced Research; Len Lichtenfeld, American Cancer Society (Retired); Henry Lim, Henry Ford Health Center; Germaine Buck Louis, George Mason University; Rebecca Luria, Hawaii Dermatological Society; Natasha Atanaskova Mesinkovska, University of California, Irvine; Theresa Michele, U.S. Food and Drug Administration; Jennifer Moore, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Erinn Muller, Mote Marine Laboratory; Andrew Negri, Australian Institute of Marine Science; Elissa O’Malley, PhD from University of Queensland; Joan Oppenheimer, Stantec; Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Frank Perna, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health; João Pestana, Universidade de Aveiro; Véronique Poulsen, L’Oréal Environmental Safety; Sandy Raimondo, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Abigail Renegar, Nova Southeastern University; Kurt Reynertson, Johnson & Johnson; Dietram Scheufele, University of Wisconsin–Madison; Daniel Schlenk, University of California, Riverside; Craig Sinclair, Cancer Council Victoria; Suzanne van Drunick, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Shuai Xu, Northwestern University.

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Contents

SUMMARY

1 INTRODUCTION

Study Task and Approach

Ecological Risk Assessment

Regulation of Sunscreens in the United States

Data Quality Assessment in Decision Making

2 INTRODUCTION TO SUNSCREENS AND THEIR UV FILTERS

Physical and Chemical Profiles

Modes of Action for Skin Protection

UV Filters in Sunscreen Formulations

Inventory and Uses of UV Filters

Findings and Knowledge Gaps

3 PROBLEM FORMULATION: SOURCES, SETTINGS, AND ECOLOGICAL RECEPTORS

Problem Formulation

Sources and Inputs of UV Filters into the Environment

Environmental Settings and Routes of UV Filter Exposure

Ecological Receptors and Ecosystem Services

Findings and Knowledge Gaps

4 FATE, TRANSPORT, AND POTENTIAL EXPOSURE IN THE ENVIRONMENT

How Exposure Information Is Used in Ecological Risk Assessment

Fate Characteristics of UV Filters

Physical Factors and Spatial Relationships

Estimated and Measured Concentrations in Water and Sediments

Analytical Chemistry Considerations

Findings and Knowledge Gaps

5 BIOACCUMULATION AND MEASURED CONCENTRATIONS OF UV FILTERS IN BIOTA

How Bioaccumulation Information Is Used in Risk Assessment

Bioaccumulation of UV Filters

Exposure Beyond Aquatic Ecosystems

Findings and Knowledge Gaps

6 REVIEW OF STUDIES ON THE EFFECTS OF UV FILTERS IN AQUATIC ENVIRONMENTS

How Effects Information Is Used in Ecological Risk Assessments

Acute Toxicity QSAR Overview

Committee Approach to Toxicity Data Relevance and Reliability for ERA

Investigations on the Toxicity of Organic UV Filters to Aquatic Organisms

Investigations on the Toxicity of Inorganic UV Filters to Aquatic Organisms

Syntheses of UV Filter Toxicity Data

Studies Informing Mode(s) of Action

Potential for Effects on Threatened and Endangered Species

Community and Ecosystem Effects

Effects of UV Filters in the Context of Multiple Stressors

Findings and Knowledge Gaps

7 SUNSCREEN, PREVENTIVE HEALTH BEHAVIORS, AND IMPLICATIONS OF CHANGES IN SUNSCREEN USE FOR PUBLIC HEALTH

Ultraviolet Radiation and Skin Damage

Sunscreen Efficacy, Safety, and Use

Correlates of Sunscreen Use and Changes in Sunscreen Use

Potential Changes to Sunscreen Use and the Human Health Consequences

Findings and Knowledge Gaps

8 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Summary of Information on Each UV Filter

Conclusions

Recommendations

Managing Human and Environmental Health

APPENDIXES

A Committee Member Biographies

B UV Filter Usage

C UV Filter Water and Sediment Occurrence Data

D Supplementary Information for Bioaccumulation

E UV Filter Toxicity Data Tables

F Studies on Behavioral and Physiological Endpoints on Select Organic UV Filters

G Acronyms, Abbreviations, and Units

REFERENCES