“There are a lot of ingredients in cosmetics, hair care and sunscreen that can act as endocrine mimickers in a lab, meaning they kind of act like a hormone,” Waldman explains.
But He stresses that, when it comes to chemical sunscreen ingredients, the potential link largely comes from animal studies that likely don’t translate to humans. For instance, in many studies, researchers are feeding large amounts of these ingredients to mice, He explains, which is “not really comparable to a human situation.”