Is your sunscreen scamming you?

Australia is one of the world's skin cancer hotspots, where around 2,000 people die from skin cancer and melanoma every year and nearly two out of every three Australians are expected to have at least one skin cancer removed during their lifetime.

In a country where sunscreen is an everyday necessity, a controversy that began in mid-2025 drew global attention after the consumer advocacy group Choice found that 16 out of 20 popular sunscreens failed to deliver the SPF protection claimed on their labels.

The most widely discussed case involved a product marketed as SPF 50+ that reportedly performed at around SPF 4 in testing.

The brand disputed the finding, but withdrew the product from sale, and Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration has since been reviewing why test results for the same products differ so widely between laboratories.

The controversy also challenged a common belief among many Bangladeshi consumers, that imported skincare products are automatically more reliable than locally made ones.

It showed that a well-known brand name alone is no longer enough. Whether a sunscreen comes from a global brand or a local company, what matters most is whether it actually delivers the protection promised on its label.

This is becoming increasingly important as rising temperatures and growing awareness of the harmful effects of ultraviolet (UV) rays encourage more people to use sunscreen every day.

Bangladesh's hot and humid climate brings its own challenges. Many people avoid sunscreen because it feels greasy or sticky, or leaves a white cast, and a formula developed for another country's climate may not always be comfortable for daily use here. A sunscreen that performs well in a laboratory but sits unused on a shelf protects nobody.

So how can consumers know whether a sunscreen really works? The first step is understanding what the label means. SPF, or Sun Protection Factor, measures protection against UVB rays, which mainly cause sunburn.

Applied correctly, an SPF 50 sunscreen blocks around 98 per cent of these rays. But SPF is only part of the story. The PA rating indicates protection against UVA rays, which penetrate deeper into the skin and are linked to tanning, pigmentation and premature ageing.

Together, the two ratings show how well a sunscreen defends against both immediate and long-term sun damage.

The second step is asking how those numbers were arrived at. Not all SPF testing is the same. In-vivo testing applies the product to human volunteers and measures the point at which skin begins to redden under controlled UV exposure; it is the method regulators in most markets treat as definitive, and the method behind the Australian findings. In-vitro testing measures how much UV radiation passes through a thin film of the product using a spectrophotometer.

It is faster, more affordable and widely used across the industry, though it is a laboratory proxy rather than a human study.

Neither method is a formality, and results can vary between laboratories even for the same product, which is precisely what regulators in Australia are now examining.

For consumers, the practical takeaway is that a brand willing to name its laboratory, its method and its result is offering something more useful than one that simply prints a number on a bottle.

In response to the global scrutiny, some local skincare brands have begun placing greater emphasis on external verification. Skin Cafe is one such example.

The Bangladeshi brand submitted its Skin Cafe Sunscreen SPF 50 PA+++ with Vitamin C for third-party testing at WAFFEN Research Laboratory Limited, a Dhaka-based laboratory accredited under the internationally recognised ISO/IEC 17025:2017 standard.

The test, carried out in July 2024 under report reference ANA-240724002/1, used UV spectrophotometry, an in-vitro method.

According to the laboratory report shared by the company, the sunscreen returned an SPF value of 52.51, a result consistent with the SPF 50 stated on its packaging.

The company notes that a reading marginally above 50 should be read as confirmation of the claim rather than as evidence of superior performance, since values in that range fall within the normal variability of SPF measurement.

The decision to test locally also speaks to the second half of the problem. A sunscreen's real-world effectiveness depends on consistent daily use, and that depends on how it feels in the climate where it is worn.

Formulating and testing for Bangladeshi conditions, rather than adapting a product built for a cooler, drier market, is one-way brands here are attempting to close the gap between laboratory performance and everyday habit.

None of this makes any single test the final word. Independent verification is a floor, not a ceiling, and consumers are entitled to ask which method was used, when, and by whom.

But the Australian controversy showed that attractive packaging and a high SPF claim are no longer enough on their own.

Whether choosing an imported or a local sunscreen, consumers now have every reason to look for testing and transparency, and brands have every reason to provide it.