Reef Safety Tests

How can you be sure what the best reef-safe sunscreen is?

Made with Natural Ingredients. Biodegradable. Reef-safe. Chemical free. Green.
These are all very loosely regulated claims with respect to sunscreen safety.

We have learned that you can not simply trust that what is on the front of a label is truthful.

Certain ingredients in sunscreens like oxybenzone, avobenzone and octinoxate are toxic to corals and reef fish, but are still in products that are falsely labeled as reef-safe and biodegradable.

Going beyond Reef-safe: Why We’re Reef Safer*

Since our inception, we’ve boldly challenged the definition of “reef safe”. The term is increasingly used to mislead consumers to buy sunscreens that may not at all be “reef safe”.

Backed by science, Stream2Sea rigorously tests our products to maintain efficacy, and formulates to be biodegradable and as safe as possible for you and our waters.

We believe in transparency and education, and hope that when consumers encounter our Reef Safer* label, they’ll be inspired to delve deeper into the issue, making informed choices rather than being swayed solely by trendy labels.

Stream2Sea Product Test Results

Stream2Sea has the only products in the world tested and proven safe for C. elegans, freshwater fish, saltwater fish and coral larvae. When it comes to safety, you can guess or you can know. We like to know.

Aquatic Toxicity and Safety

We began by testing on C. Elegans, simple nematodes, which are ideal for rapid, predictive screening on inflammatory ingredients. We then moved on to freshwater and saltwater fish species, looking at the impact on the fish’s eating behavior, swimming behavior and, of course, mortality rates. Our studies were prepared and conducted by the EcoTox team at Eckerd College. The test subjects were fed at the same time every day and the same amount of food for 96 hours. The fish were exposed to the highest concentration of product that any marine animal or plant would ever naturally come into contact with. For each test, we added a competitor’s product to one group of subjects, the second group was exposed to the same concentration of Stream2Sea’s biodegradable sunscreens and product, and finally, the control group was not exposed to any foreign products. During every observation period, mortality rate, feeding behavior and swimming behavior was recorded. These experiments were done for each of our products before determining their safety. We were pleased to note that our sunscreen did not generate any mortality.

Biodegradable Does Not Mean Non-Toxic

It is important to know that just because a product is biodegradable for example, a biodegradable sunscreen, does not mean that it is non-toxic. There are several tests to measure a product’s biodegradability, and most are designed to analyze the product’s ability to breakdown in wastewater treatment facilities. To be considered ‘readily biodegradable’, the product must break down into its natural state from 60-80% in 28 days.   ‘Inherently biodegradable’ means it will break down from as low as 20% to 60% in 28 days. So if a product says it is ‘biodegradable’, that is a good first step to knowing that the company is looking at its product’s environmental breakdown.  However, it’s important to understand that you cannot measure a product’s safety just by looking at its ability to biodegrade. That said, it was important for us to know that our products would, in fact, biodegrade in their natural environments, so we tested in both fresh water, as well as salt water.