A New Sunscreen Filter Clears the FDA

A little while back, we wrote about why sunscreens in Europe tend to outperform the ones sold here in the U.S. The short version: the FDA treats sunscreen as an over-the-counter drug rather than a cosmetic, and getting a new sunscreen filter approved as a drug means years of research, testing, and submissions that cost a fortune. The government doesn't lead that work or fund it, so the bill lands entirely on whichever company is willing to pay it. For decades, no one was. Now that has changed.

On June 9th, 2026, the FDA added bemotrizinol to the list of approved sunscreen active ingredients, the first new filter cleared for American sunscreens in more than two decades. If you follow ingredient labels, you may already know this one by a few other names: BEMT, Tinosorb S, or, as it'll be sold here, Parsol Shield. The company DSM-Firmenich shepherded it through the FDA at concentrations of up to 6%, and the agency now considers it generally recognized as safe and effective for adults and for children as young as six months old.

For a category that has barely changed since the 1990s, this is a genuinely big deal. Here's why it matters and what it actually means for you.

What Makes Bemotrizinol Worth the Wait

Most of the chemical filters available in the U.S. are specialists. They cover part of the ultraviolet spectrum well, but you have to blend several of them together to get true broad-spectrum coverage. Bemotrizinol is more of a generalist — it absorbs UVB, UVA2, and UVA1 rays on its own. That's the whole spectrum in a single ingredient, and it's part of why it's such a meaningful addition.

A quick refresher on why that range matters: UVB rays are the ones that burn you, while UVA rays drive a lot of the aging (wrinkles, sunspots, loss of elasticity) and both types feed into skin cancer risk. Strong, reliable UVA protection has long been one of the weaker spots in the American sunscreen aisle, and few of our existing filters cover it as broadly as this one does.

Bemotrizinol also fixes a couple of long-standing annoyances. Avobenzone, one of the go-to UVA filters in the U.S., is photounstable, meaning it slowly breaks down in sunlight and loses its punch the longer you're out (which is a little ironic for a sunscreen). Zinc oxide is stable and effective but leaves that telltale white cast on the skin. Bemotrizinol, by contrast, holds up well under prolonged sun exposure and barely absorbs into the body thanks to its large molecular size. It even helps stabilize other filters in a formula and tends to feel pleasant to wear.

Why It Took Twenty-Plus Years

If bemotrizinol is this good, why has it been sitting on the sidelines while the rest of the world used it? The answer is bureaucratic, not scientific.

The ingredient itself isn't new and isn't owned by anyone. The original patents expired years ago, and suppliers have sold it as a cosmetic ingredient abroad since the late 1990s. What nobody in the U.S. wanted to take on was the expensive part: sponsoring it through the FDA's drug-approval process, which means paying for years of safety studies and filing the formal request. BASF, which inherited the original technology, decided it wasn't worth the cost. Then in 2018, DSM (now DSM-Firmenich) volunteered — funding the studies and shepherding it through the FDA under its own brand name, Parsol Shield, in exchange for an 18-month exclusive to sell it here. The holdup was never the science; it was who would finally pay for the paperwork.

A better process helped, too. Bemotrizinol is the first ingredient added to a sunscreen monograph under a streamlined framework created by the CARES Act. The FDA issued its proposed order in December 2025 and finalized the approval roughly seven months later — which, after twenty-plus years of gridlock, feels almost brisk.

A "New" Ingredient With a Long Track Record

It's worth emphasizing that "new to the U.S." doesn't mean new, period. Bemotrizinol was first approved in Europe in 1999 and has been used in sunscreens across Europe, Australia, Japan, and South Korea ever since. So while it's a fresh arrival on our shelves, it carries more than 25 years of real-world use behind it, which is exactly the kind of head start that should give people confidence in it.

What This Means for You

Now for the practical part: you won't find bemotrizinol on store shelves tomorrow. The approval clears the way, but manufacturers still have to formulate, test, and produce the actual products. The earliest they can begin including it is around August, and DSM-Firmenich holds exclusive marketing rights for 18 months, so it'll take some time for bemotrizinol-based sunscreens to roll out widely.

In other words: patience. This is the start of better options reaching the U.S., not an overnight upgrade. And it absolutely does not mean your current sunscreen is suddenly useless. The best thing you can do today is the same as yesterday i.e. wear a broad-spectrum sunscreen of at least SPF 30, reapply it, and seek shade when the sun is strongest. 

Why You Won't Find Sunscreen at Relterra

You might expect a company built on bringing the world's best skincare to the U.S. to carry sunscreen. We don't, and this entire story is the reason why.

Because the U.S. classifies sunscreen as an over-the-counter drug, the international products we love are effectively locked out. Many of them make genuinely excellent sunscreens using advanced filters that have protected skin across the world for years, but those filters are not on the FDA's approved list, which means we can't legally sell those products here. Bemotrizinol is a perfect example: safe, effective, and everywhere else in the world, yet only now, after two decades, cleared for the U.S. Rather than offer you a watered-down version or something that skirts the rules, we've chosen to sit sunscreen out until American regulation catches up to the science.

Why This Is Exactly Why Relterra Exists

Here's the bigger picture, and the reason I started this company in the first place. My frustration was never with any single ingredient. It's that the FDA tends to be reactive rather than proactive about what's allowed to touch your skin. With sunscreen, it won't invest in or approve better filters until a private company spends years and millions doing the work for them. With cosmetics, it won't restrict a potentially harmful ingredient until there's undisputed proof of harm, which is why the U.S. bans a small handful of ingredients while the EU restricts well over a thousand.

The rest of the world simply moves faster and holds a higher bar. So instead of waiting on our regulators to act, we go find the products that already clear it. That's what Relterra does: we bring in international skincare that is safe, effective, and higher quality, so you don't have to wait twenty years for the FDA to catch up before you can put something better on your skin.

A Crack in the Door

What I find most encouraging isn't this one ingredient, it's what it signals. For the first time in a generation, the U.S. has shown it can actually approve a modern sunscreen filter, and it did so using a faster, more sensible process. One approval doesn't close the enormous gap between American and European sun protection, but it's the first real movement we've seen in a very long time.

I've been wishing someone would lead the charge on bringing better sun care to the U.S. Someone finally did. Here's hoping bemotrizinol is the first of several, and that the next one doesn't take another twenty years.

Cheers, Chase Founder of Relterra