Swimmers’ Sunscreen Kills Coral
Wed, Jan 30, 2008
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Islands and beaches ringed by coral reefs draw thousands of tourists a year.
But it seems that the tourists attracted by the coral’s beauty and animal diversity may be inadvertently destroying the reefs.
The real culprit is something that every responsible individual takes to the ocean. Ingredients found in sunblock are causing the environmental problem. Four separate ingredients, paraben, cinnamate, benzophenone, and camphor, can wake up viruses that lie dormant inside the algae that helps keep coral alive in a symbiotic relationship.
The viruses then replicate and explode out of the algae, spreading further out in the coral community. This eventually kills off the algae, which provide the coral with food and make them colourful. Without the algae, the coral dies.
Researchers believe that this is a serious environmental issue, threatening up to 10% of the world’s coral population. Around 5,000 metric tons of sunscreen is washed off swimmers in the ocean every year. Even low doses of the ingredients can start the process. The study found that water around coral exposed to sunscreen had more than 15 times as many viruses as water around non-exposed coral.
The environmental problem is very serious. Coral reefs are an important part of the ocean’s ecology, providing an excellent habitat for many forms of life and promoting animal diversity. And sunscreen is not the only environmental issue facing coral reefs. According to marine virus and coral researcher Rebecca Vega Thurber: “Other [human-induced] factors such as coastal pollution, overfishing, and sedimentation all contribute to coral reef habitat degradation, and this work continues in that vein.” Coral reefs are dying faster than the world’s rainforests.
There may soon be hope for those of you who don’t want skin cancer but also balk at the thought of harming such an important part of earth’s ecology. An Australian group is working on a new sunscreen that is based on the ultraviolet-blocking properties found within coral itself.
Info from National Geographic
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June 6th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
wow thankyou for posting this it is amazing so now we need to make coral safe sunscreen, just like the dolphin safe stuff maybe?
July 1st, 2008 at 2:17 am
I am a scuba diver and I would like to know what kind of sun screen I should buy and use.
Thank you
February 5th, 2009 at 3:57 am
This is really a piss poor study. The authors showed that high concentrations of some chemicals in sunscreen can cause harm to corals. Not that this actually happens in the wild. Simple sugar can have similar effects (and at known real-world levels).
The really unimpressive part of this is that the concentrations they used in the tests have no basis in actual values from coral reefs. They didn’t even bother to measure. They cite a study done on a popular swimming lake as the basis for the concentration they chose, but use a value several times that found in the lake. In reality you would expect to have lower levels near coral reefs than in a lake due to dilution- that is if you actually measured.
There is no indication that these results bear any resemblance to any real-world case.