Jessica Alba's "Honest Company" Sucker Punches A Whole Demographic Of "Organic Puritans"

Jessica Alba at company headquarters. 

The Failure of Jessica Alba's Honest Company's Sunscreen

A consumer products company whose eco-friendly and hypoallergenic goods are intended to give parents peace of mind is now getting a piece of the minds of customers over the apparent failure of their reformulated SPF 30 sunscreen lotion. The Honest Company, co-founded by actress Jessica Alba, is now the focus of customer complaints and photos of sunburned children posted online. The company’s “natural mineral-based skin protection” lotion has been advertised as a safe and simple alternative to sunscreens containing synthetic chemicals, providing 80 minutes of water resistance and “broad spectrum’ skin protection against the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation.

With some caveats, customer reviews on Amazon.com provide an insightful timeline as to the problems with the product. Last year, most of the complaints focused on the thick and greasy character of the lotion. The product was reportedly reformulated in early 2015, with the packing changing from a light blue, to white and yellow with colorful graphics. Reviews began accumulating in March 2015 – and exploded in July – with reports of users suffering extensive sunburns after sun exposure with the new formulation of the lotion, even when reportedly using and reapplying as directed.

So what’s going on? The issue could be a problem with the reformulation itself — but it could also have to do with the simple fact that people apply sunscreen differently on the beach than they do in the lab. Here’s what we know so far:

The mineral-based sunscreen component is zinc oxide, the chemical that conjures up memories of lifeguards strutting around with white cream on their noses. Zinc oxide has excellent sun-protectant qualities in that it absorbs or deflects the three major classifications of ultraviolet light: UVA, UVB and far UVA. The aesthetic problem is that it works best at a concentration so high that the white color doesn’t disappear when rubbing in. Moreover, the zinc oxide particles have to be suspended in a relatively thick and greasy carrier that feels like rubbing on petroleum jelly, often because it contains some petrolatum.

That aesthetic problem is what plagued the product during 2014. Customers complained that the product left a white coating on the skin, was greasy and uncomfortable, with several reports of an unpleasant smell, “like a mix of rancid oils and dirt,” said one customer on Amazon who had reportedly purchase it directly from the company.

The new formulation released this year appears to have reduced the zinc oxide concentration from 20 percent to 9.3 percent with the claim that it doesn’t leave a white residue. The base, which still lists beeswax as the number one ingredient, now contains shea butter and a variety of plant based oils, likely intended to improve the sensory features of the product.

I called The Honest Company for comment this morning and was promised a return call when a West Coast representative could respond to me. But People magazine reported this company comment in their article posted Sunday night:

The Honest Company is committed to providing safe and effective products, and we take all consumer feedback very seriously.

Our Sunscreen Lotion was tested, by an independent 3rd party, against the protocols prescribed by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA) monograph for over-the-counter sunscreen products. The results showed that our product is effective and safe for use as an 80 minute water-resistant (FDA’s highest rating), SPF 30 sunscreen lotion in accordance with FDA regulations when used as directed (Shake Well. Apply liberally and evenly 15 minutes before sun exposure. Reapply after 80 minutes of swimming or sweating, immediately after towel drying and at least every 2 hours).

The number of complaints received on our own website about our Sunscreen Lotion constitute less than one half of one percent of all units actually sold at honest.com.

What might have gone wrong, then?

This response provides us with some clues as to why a subset of customers may have been reporting product failures – and these are my speculations as a scientist who knows a bit about pharmaceutical formulations.

My most immediate thought is that users might not have shaken the product adequately before using. Unlike a bottle, which seems like it should be shaken, the product is provided in a three-ounce tube. For whatever psychological reason, I don’t think of a tube as requiring shaking.

Moreover, with the change in the formulation of the base and reducing the zinc oxide content, the active ingredient might slowly concentrate in the tube depending on where it’s been sitting. So, you might get a huge burst of zinc oxide at first and then a bunch of carrier with less zinc oxide, or you might just get a bunch of carrier. I say this because 2015 customers vary in their complaints about the whiteness of the product when rubbed on the skin.

Another problem might be an individual user’s interpretation of “apply liberally,” but that’s a potential problem with any sunscreen product. When a company or independent contractor tests its product on human volunteers, it’s applied at two milligrams per square centimeter of skin surface area. For context, the average adult has 1.7 square meters of skin surface area, or 17,000 square centimeters (no, not 170). (It’s 1.9 m2 for men, 1.6 m2 for women.)

So if an adult were to cover their entire body in product at the FDA testing standard, you’d need to apply 34 grams (1.2 ounces), or just over a third of a tube of The Honest Company’s sunscreen. Most folks don’t apply it everywhere everywhere, but this is where the general recommendation of “a shot glass worth’s” of sunscreen comes from: a shot glass holds about one fluid ounce and that would be about 28 grams of a typical lotion.

Do you put on that much lotion? Does the popularity of concentrated sunscreen sprays make you think you need less lotion? Do you really reapply it every hour or two? Do you reapply it after toweling off? Swimming or sweating? Yeah, I thought so.

But children, whose sunburns seem to be most commonly reported for this product, have a high surface area relative to their weight. So if you’re applying sunscreen to your child, you might tend to apply less than you apply to yourself. Usually, that’s not a problem. But if a product is just on the edge of being protective, any variation could make them even more susceptible to a sunburn.

I’m always hesitant to report too hastily on customer complaints but the abundance and timing of this episode is convincing that something has gone wrong with the product.

Incidentally, the $1 billion success story of actress Jessica Alba’s consumer products business, The Honest Company, was just featured on the June 15th cover of Forbes magazine. The article, by staff writer Clare O’Connor, had been posted online two weeks earlier and counts over 1.1 million views. Riding the wave of parental fears over “chemicals” in products that touch the skin in one way or another, Alba was spurred to start the company after her own child showed the same hypersensitivity issues that she had as a child:

In 2008 Alba was newly engaged to Internet entrepreneur Cash Warren and pregnant with their first child. At a baby shower thrown by family and friends, she remembers her mother advising her to use baby detergent to prewash the piles of onesies she’d received as gifts. She used a mainstream brand and immediately broke out into ugly red welts, harkening back to a childhood spent in and out of emergency rooms and doctors’ offices.

In the case of sunscreen, the FDA has approved 17 chemicals for use. One of the older chemicals, PABA (p-amino-benzoic acid), can cause some skin hypersensitivity and has gone by the wayside. The most common today is oxybenzone and avobenzone but some consumers are concerned over reports that these chemicals are absorbed into the body. But just because they get into the body, they’re not dangerous and we metabolize them quite readily.

The marketing tactic for “chemical-free” or “synthetic chemical-free” products has fueled this resurgence in the use of zinc oxide. But even though zinc oxide occurs in nature, commercial zinc oxide is synthesized from pure zinc or zinc ores. So while we’d all prefer products applied to skin to be free of dangerous or allergy-inducing chemicals, we now have a case where having a dogmatic consumer product philosophy might have backfired – with the chemical still being synthetic.