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We have to talk about the sunscreen controversy! This week, popular Australian sunscreen brand Ultra Violette – a favourite of influencers and beauty journalists – announced it is pulling the Lean Screen SPF Mattifying Zinc Sunscreen off the market due to tests showing it may only provide SPF 4, despite being labelled as an SPF 50+ product. The shocking test results were first publicised by consumer rights group Choice in June.
There are two aspects in particular I feel are getting a little bit lost in the ‘drama’ of the story. Let’s start with a timeline of what happened in case you haven’t been following this news story.
PSA: Slip, slop, slap & shade, always! Australian sunscreen is a highly regulated and generally very reliable product, so if you have concerns over the type you use just switch to another brand. Apply enough (one teaspoon on each arm, leg, face, front and back of body) and reapply often (every two hours!)
Here is what happened, in chronological order:
February: Consumer advocacy group CHOICE tests 20 popular Australian sunscreen products labelled as SPF 50+. The tests were run by Eurofins Dermatest lab in Sydney. The products are sampled into amber glass jars and tested within one hour.
16 of 20 products come back with SPF levels lower than 50, and the worst by far is Ultra Violette’s Lean Screen – with an SPF rating of 4. For context, the second lowest product comes back as SPF 24. You can see all CHOICE test results here.March: CHOICE alerts Ultra Violette to the very low SPF result and says it will send the product to another lab for a second test.
April: Ultra Violette sends samples of Lean Screen to their preferred lab for testing, Princeton Consumer Research (PCR) in Manchester, England. The results come back as SPF 61.7.
May: Choice has the Normec Schrader Institute lab in Germany conduct a second test of Ultra Violette’s sunscreen. It returns an SPF of 5.
June 12: CHOICE publishes the results. It is immediately picked up by mainstream media and is extensively discussed on social media. There is a particular focus on the shocking result from Ultra Violette.
The TGA, which is the regulator responsible for allowing health products like sunscreen to be sold in Australia, releases a statement that says: “We will be investigating the CHOICE findings and will take regulatory action as required.”June 13: Ultra Violette issues a statement on its website strongly refuting CHOICE’s results (which has since been deleted – you can read the archived version here). It says the brand “[does] not accept these results as even remotely accurate”, and that a “testing result of SPF 4 [is] scientifically impossible”.
The statement suggests that CHOICE may have mishandled the product or mistakenly tested the wrong product, and accuses CHOICE of using an insufficient sample size. The statement also says that Ultra Violette has “not received a single substantiated claim of sunburn during use”. The brand publishes the results of its own SPF tests alongside the statement, which you can read here.
On the same day, Ultra Violette founder Ava Chandler-Matthews posted a video to the brand’s social media channels to further defend the product and blame CHOICE for the poor test results. In it she says she “I put Lean Screen on my children and I still would tomorrow”.
In a response to a TikTok comment asking if Ultra Violette will be taking legal action, Chandler-Matthews replies from her personal account: “We do not take reputational damage lightly. We are exploring all avenues at this stage.”
June 16: CHOICE publishes a statement saying it stands behind its tests, explains its testing methodology and shares the testing reports for all 20 products.
July 4: The ABC publishes its investigation into PCR, the testing lab used by Ultra Violette. Industry experts say PCR’s test results for Ultra Violette are unusually consistent with one saying he had “never seen results like PCR's in his entire career” and another said “it doesn't look realistic."
All the brands that failed the CHOICE test said they had their own certification testing to prove their products met the SPF50 criteria. Half of those brands had certification testing done by PCR (the TGA does not do its own testing).
Ultra Violette tells the ABC it has commissioned further tests of Lean Screen using a different lab.July 6: The Australian Financial Review publishes a story that says PCR has previously provided testing for Regrowz, a hair regrowth product made of mostly coconut oil which claimed “100 per cent improvement in all cases”.
The article also reveals that Ultra Violette does not create the formula for Lean Screen. It is manufactured by Wild Child Laboratories in Perth.August 22: Ultra Violette announces it must pull Lean Screen from the market after additional tests showed wildly varying results. It says that across eight different tests the product has an SPF of 4, 10, 21, 26, 33, 60, 61, and 64. The TGA advises that products with an SPF of 30 are effective to use.
The brand says it is no longer working with PCR for testing, nor Wild Child Laboratories for manufacturing. It does not publish the test reports in full. It offers refunds to customers who have purchased Lean Screen since 2023 (you can fill out the form here).
Takeaway One: Journalism did this!
One important part of this story that’s been getting lost is the ABC’s investigation into the PCR testing lab, and the AFR’s follow up story. The AFR reported that an American consumer advocacy organisation — just like CHOICE — says that PCR advertises to its clients by saying it can provide research to “prove whatever claim they like”.
PCR was used to do the original certification testing used to get TGA approval for products from Ultra Violette, Cancer Council, Woolworths, Coles, Bondi Sands and Sun Bum. Ultra Violette removing Lean Screen from sale should be a sign for these brands to also retest with different labs if they haven’t already, and for the TGA to investigate all sunscreen products they have certified with PCR tests.
If it wasn’t for the ABC investigation, Ultra Violette may not have had a reason to test its product again and ultimately remove it from sale.
Takeaway Two: Influencers work for brands, not you
Many of the big names in Australian beauty content and media leapt to the defence of Ultra Violette on social media – in some cases spread misleading information about what had actually happened, framing the results as CHOICE “attacking” a female founded brand, or claimed that CHOICE was undermining confidence in the entire sunscreen category. One skincare creator who has a commercial relationship with Ultra Violette said that public concern over the SPF 4 result was a result of ‘poor media literacy’.
Beauty influencers (and a lot of beauty media) do not work for consumers – they work for the brands. Their job is to sell; the less you buy, the less money they make. This ‘scandal’ was as bad for them as it was for the brand itself.
Many of these influencers also consider themselves “skincare experts”. They are not. Unless an influencer is also a dermatologist or has specific expertise(like Michelle from Lab Muffin Beauty Science, a cosmetic chemist with a PhD in chemistry) the ‘education’ a beauty creator can provide you is limited and generally provided to them by a brand.
On the other hand, CHOICE is a non-profit, consumer advocacy organisation founded in 1959. It exists to provide Australian consumers with independent testing and reviews of products that are not provided by the brand itself.
Is there really an argument to be had about who is more “trustworthy” in this scenario: a consumer advocacy nonprofit, or a company rumoured to be worth $80 million and the influencers it pays to promote it?
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How neo-Nazi support for a viral anti-immigration rally exposed fractures among ‘freedom’ groups on Crikey
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