A new study, commissioned by the European Union and published in US journal Environmental Health Perspectives, has found evidence which shows that sun screen lotions used by beach lovers and tourists worldwide are a major cause of coral bleaching.


Researchers led by Roberto Danovaro at the University of Pisa in Italy added controlled amounts of three brands of sunscreen to seawater surrounding coral reefs in Mexico, Indonesia, Thailand and Egypt. They found that even small doses encouraged large discharges of coral mucous - a clear sign of environmental stress - within 18 to 48 hours, and within 96 hours, complete bleaching of corals had occurred.

The study included seven, out of twenty, commonly used chemicals in sun screens that act as UV filters and are also found in a range of products for use in personal skin care. These chemical compounds have been detected near sea, and also freshwater, tourist locations

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has reported that around 10% of tourism takes place in tropical areas. That is almost 78 million tourists visiting coral reefs each year, and with an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 tonnes of sunscreen being released annually in reef areas, it is clearly going to have devastating effects on the reefs. They have estimated that during a twenty minute dip in the ocean, as much as 25% of the damaging sunscreen chemicals leach from the skin into the water.

Coral reefs are among the most biologically diverse and productive ecosystems on Earth, but some 60% of these reef systems are threatened by a deadly combination of industrial pollution, climate change and a growing excess of UV radiation.

Reefs are useful to the environment and to people in a number of ways. For example, they protect shores from the impact of waves and from storms, they provide a lot of benefits to humans in the form of food and medicine, and they provide economic benefits to local communities from tourism and fishing. The coral reefs face many natural stresses, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, or predators like the crown of thorns starfish. These events are usually short lived and the coral has plenty of time to recover. The man made stresses, in particular pollution, last over prolonged periods of time without the necessary respite needed for recovery.

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