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U.S. Representatives Debbie Dingell (MI-12) and Ed Whitfield (KY-01) were joined this week by a bipartisan coalition of 52 Members of Congress in sending a letter to President Obama asking for his assistance to ensure the repeated calls for urgency in skin cancer prevention are heeded at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The full letter can be read here. Currently, eight sunscreen ingredient applications have been pending at the FDA, some for over a decade, without final decisions despite enactment of the bipartisan Sunscreen Innovation Act signed into law last November.

“Skin cancer is a growing epidemic in this country that is only getting worse according to the U.S. Surgeon General. Yet, Americans have gone more than a decade without the kinds of innovative sunscreen products citizens in other countries have enjoyed for years," said Dingell. “This year alone, five million Americans will be diagnosed with skin cancer. We owe it to them to work together to solve this public health crisis.”

“When the Sunscreen Innovation Act was signed into law last year, Americans expected that they would soon be able to get the latest in sunscreen technology long available to citizens of countries all over the world. Unfortunately, eight months have passed and the FDA has yet to approve any of these sunscreens,” said Whitfield. “We are hopeful this letter to the President will engage the White House and help solve this sunscreen backlog at the FDA.”

Background:
Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer diagnosed in the U.S. Each year there are more new cases of skin cancer — including melanoma — than the combined incidence of breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer and colon cancer.  From 1975-2011, rates of melanoma in young men and women ages 20-39 years increased by 34% in men and by 84% in women. According to the Surgeon General, nearly 5 million Americans are diagnosed with skin cancer and one person dies every hour of every day from melanoma, the deadliest skin cancer. The cost to treat skin cancer is over $8 billion, which doesn’t include the pain and suffering for families that lose their loved ones from the disease. The Surgeon General and CDC both regularly call on Americans to wear sunscreen to prevent skin cancer.

The bipartisan Sunscreen Innovation Act (Public Law No: 113-195) was introduced to address the bottlenecks identified by FDA as the causes of delays in approving new sunscreen ingredients. The legislation and subsequent law streamlined the new sunscreen ingredient approval process to ensure that new sunscreen ingredients receive a transparent review within a predictable timeframe. The law was intended to ensure the American public gains access to the latest safe, effective and innovative sunscreen products to protect against the sun’s most harmful rays.

Since 2002, eight new sunscreen applications have been filed and are still awaiting final decisions 13 years later. New sunscreen technologies currently awaiting approval in the U.S. have been widely available in Europe, Asia, and Central and South America, in some cases for more than 15 years.