As I spend my Thanksgiving holiday visiting some family in Hawaii, I can't help but try to balance my health and the planet's well-being with a lot of frustration. You see? while I need sunscreen to protect me from the sun, the sunscreen that goes into the water is killing the corals.
National Geographic published a story on this. First I thought that maybe the sunscreen was preventing the coral to get the sun that it needed to flourish, just as it prevents the damaging rays to burn my skin, but it is not that simple:
"Four commonly found sunscreen ingredients can awaken dormant viruses in the symbiotic algae called zooxanthellae that live inside reef-building coral species.
The chemicals cause the viruses to replicate until their algae hosts explode, spilling viruses into the surrounding seawater, where they can infect neighboring coral communities.
Zooxanthellae provide coral with food energy through photosynthesis and contribute to the organisms' vibrant color. Without them, the coral "bleaches"—turns white—and dies."
The bad ingredients, if you want to read your sunscreen label are: paraben, cinnamate, benzophenone, and a camphor derivative.
One researcher says that banning sunscreen won't be necessary, and recommends two things swimmers can do to reduce their impact on coral: "Use sunscreens with physical filters, which reflect instead of absorb ultraviolet radiation; and use eco-friendly chemical sunscreens."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
A very interesting study that has received a lot of attention from the world of sunscreens. I had hoped they would continue with other studies and widen the scope of the original one with more chemical sunscreens and even the physical ones, but it seems that although extremely keen to do so, the team were lacking in funds.
ReplyDeleteThere are more studies being done on other impacts to the coral, like various aspects of environmental pollution. In another extreme, in the pristine seas off Tanzania the locals fish by means of dynamite - blow the ocean up so all the fish float to the surface and they can collect them all up. In the process they kill the coral and it all washes up on the shore.
Happy blog travels!