The sun isn’t toxic — but your sunscreen probably is

Founder of Primally Pure Bethany McDaniel has made it her mission to create efficient skincare products that do no harm in a market oversaturated with chemical poisons that do more harm than good.

Primally Pure sunscreen boasts all of the protection needed from the sun without the toxic chemicals and doesn’t rely on fearmongering about the sun as the main source of messaging, like most sunscreens do.

“The sun isn’t poison, but your sunscreen is,” reads one Primally Pure billboard.

However, that statement upset a lot of people and has now become the center of serious debate.

“The intention with it was to make a bold statement, get people’s attention,” McDaniel tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey on “Relatable.” “There have been so many bold statements for decades from the side of ‘slather sunscreen all over your body every second of the day so that you won’t get skin cancer and die.’”

While McDaniel wanted to point out that there’s much more nuance to the topic of sun exposure and sunscreen than we’ve previously been told, when their ad was released, people didn’t see it that way.

Rather, they saw her ad as “fearmongering,” despite the sunscreen industry using skin cancer as a reason to avoid the sun.

“There’s a lot of misinterpretation of the campaign itself, a lot of anger, like some crazy people are saying some crazy things on social media. There was one post that I reposted of a very unhinged woman telling me to go to hell for saying this,” she tells Stuckey.

“How have we gotten to a point where that is such a controversial thing to say? Like we have demonized the sun and demonized creation so much,” she continues. “I know I’ve been accused of fearmongering, but I would argue that people have fearmongered the sun for so long.”

Since the negative impact of spending time in the sun has been discussed endlessly, very few people seem to be aware of how incredible the benefits are.

“It gives us Vitamin D, it helps with our moods. We all feel it when we’re outside in the sun — we feel better. It regulates our circadian rhythms so that we’re more awake during the day and that our bodies are ready to sleep when the sun falls at night,” McDaniel explains.

“There’s so much to living in tune with the sun. I think that’s how we’re designed to live, but I also think there are risks to uninhibited sun exposure,” she continues.

Which is why McDaniel created her own sunscreen that uses a formula with 25% zinc oxide and nontoxic natural ingredients.

“In my opinion, zinc oxide is the safest option for sun protection. There are a lot of chemical filters out there, but the FDA now does not recognize any of them as being safe. The EPA also just came out with a study and found that only 25% of sunscreens on the market are both safe and effective,” she explains.

“So these chemical filters — there’s a lot of issues with them. They absorb, and then they are in the bloodstream at much higher limits than is considered safe. A lot of them are known to be hormone-disrupting and carcinogenic, or cancer-causing. They actually create a chemical reaction in the skin when the sun hits it,” she continues.

“The fearmongering thing really gets me, because this is just sharing information,” she adds.

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