Environmental and ecotoxicity impacts of sunscreen formulations with

Overview

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Key numbers

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Fig. 1. The system model approach used in the study is detail in Table S2 in the Supplementary material. A full life
the data providers are provided in detail in Table S1 in the screen is expected to be released in nature in the use stage
synthesis with oxidoreductase enzymes to produce mela- data used in the modelling are presented in Table S2 in
rable sunscreens with different formulations. See also Table S2 in the lines and marine environments marked with dashed lines) are optional
sented per quality aspect in Table S3 in the Supplementary the most to the category of “ecotoxicity: freshwater” and
material. As described above and in Table S3, the biggest is the second most important life cycle stage “human tox-
of specific data on the chemical ingredients was available, hexyldecanol (45% of the total “ecotoxicity: freshwater”
proxy data had to be used in the modeling, which introduced impact) and ethylhexyl salicylate (38%) are discharged to
uncertainty figures for each ingredient, a lognormal distri- of palmitic acid from the dextrin palmitate (32% of the
bution with a default uncertainty of 20% was applied to all total human toxicity: non-carcinogenic impact) in the use
assessment. e.g. mercury II (ca. 16%), arsenic ion (ca. 14%), lead II
(ca. 10%) and cadmium II (ca. 9%) released mainly in the
3 Results of the sunscreen is the main cause (54%) of the category
acterized results are presented as total values in Table 1 raw materials acquisition (45%) and packaging production
and in more detail by life cycle stages in Table S4-Table (36%), since the packaging is made of plastics of fossil ori-
Table 1 Characterized impact assessment results of SPF boosted and reference sunscreens ending up in freshwater and sea water. The results are
the “climate change” category (by ca. 20% of the total cli- environments. When discharged into freshwater, the most
releases fossil CO2 emissions. The SPF booster production 80% of the weighted impacts) and “climate change” (5%).
has minor impacts (less than 10%) in all impact categories Again, in sea water, the most important categories are “cli-
in the current model, being the highest in the ozone deple- mate change” (27% of total weighted impacts), “energy
When the use of SPF boosted sunscreen is in marine ticulate matter” (7%), “material resources: metals/minerals”
environments, the contribution analysis is very similar to (6%), “acidification” (5%), “eutrophication: freshwater”
the freshwater case, as shown in Fig. 4. The results differ (4%) and “ecotoxicity: freshwater” (4%).
non –carcinogenic” impact categories, where the use stage the sunscreen are ca. 80% lower when the product enters the
Table S8 in the Supplementary material. For both sunscreens the sunscreen formulas, the uncertainties for both sunscreen
the use stage contributes ca. 80% when the sunscreen ends formulations are very similar. The standard deviations of
life cycle stage, contributing around 65%. production in the reference sunscreen includes only one
tion (solid boxes) and 95% prediction interval (whiskers) amounts of ingredients released, especially hexyldecanol
95% prediction interval of the
assumed 20% standard deviation
impact category was “ecotoxicity: freshwater”. The main ingredients, as shown in Table S13 in the Supplementary
source of impacts, contributing ca. 30–50% of the impacts packaging as an alternative to incineration may help reduce
greenhouse gas emissions (in this case accounting for c. 20% use stage environment, and thus, based on the uncertainty
of the climate impact but only approximately 1–6% of the results no further conclusions of the environmental superi-
6% of the total environmental footprint, and since the pack- odologies, and system boundaries. For example, Thakur
uted over 95% to the SPF production stage, leaving minor phase are currently lacking. Similarly, existing research on
industrial level, as the yield was less than 80% in laboratory prehensive research on marine environments. The findings
only < 4% of the total environmental footprint in the cur- and SPF booster have the same functionality. Deeper
freshwater scenario as shown in Tables S11 and S12 in the and Florida, the observed willingness to switch to more
range between 25 and 50% with additional indirect releases that different ecosystems vary greatly in their sensitivity to
UV filters, as detailed in Table S14 in the Supplementary should be prioritized when aiming to reduce the environ-

Methods (brief)

collected in the life cycle inventory phase from companies grave, including the packaging of the product. The electric-
ingredients. 2000 samples were calculated in the uncertainty stage and emissions in the raw material acquisition stage,
Secchi M, Castellani V, Collina E, Mirabella N, Sala S (2016) Assess- roadmap. TRAC Trends Anal Chem 157:116724. https://doi.org

Implications

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Verification notes

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Update history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and the full version history lives in git. When DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.

Commit	Date	Change	Description
b01ec52c	2026-08-04	major	2 sections added
d49e450f	2026-08-03	major	5 sections added; narrative text revised