By Anna Edney

Dory ‘Braylan’ Hux was a competitive middle-school soccer player from North Carolina with vigilant parents who started putting Neutrogena sunscreen on their freckle-faced son at a young age to protect his skin.

It was easy for them to apply thanks to the propellant used in spray-on sunscreens. They had no way of knowing the gas, derived from fossil fuel, wasn’t properly purified and contaminated the sunscreen with benzene, a potent carcinogen. Braylan died in 2021, just months before the sunscreen’s maker would recall the product because it contained the toxic chemical.

An emerging field of research has uncovered a minefield in US consumer goods, finding scores of products like sunscreen, tampons and antiperspirants are laced with poisons that can make people sick. These products are everywhere. Americans spend around $40 billion on nonprescription drugs each year, which include many personal care products, according to the Consumer Healthcare Products Association.

The US Food and Drug Administration has said it’s taking the issue seriously and that protecting public health is its highest priority. Still, reports about potentially deadly compounds in everyday items keep coming and the agency tasked with ensuring their safety hasn’t outlined additional plans to address the issue. Some companies are pulling products from US store shelves quickly, while others exploit regulatory gaps and let their products linger on the market.

“That should be alarming for consumers,” said Adana Llanos, a cancer and molecular epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “The FDA needs to do a better job — when you walk into a Target, a Walmart, a supermarket, whatever — of making sure consumer products are safe.”

When it comes to regulating these products, the FDA tends to leave it up to companies to ensure their products are safe.

It’s unclear whether that will change under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to run the US Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has called for getting rid of dyes and other ingredients linked to cancer that can be found in food and has said the US needs tougher regulators that aren’t as close to the industries they police.

Self Policing

Braylan Hux, the 14-year-old student at Mount Holly Middle School just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, started playing soccer at the age of 3, was recruited to a travel club at 7 and later joined his middle school team, according to a lawsuit filed in US District Court in the Western District of North Carolina.

In April 2021, tests found Braylan had low levels of white blood cells that typically fight off infections. He was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a blood cancer, and doctors rushed to start chemotherapy. He went into acute respiratory failure and shock almost immediately, the lawsuit said, and died a few days later.

Not long after, an independent lab, Valisure LLC, found benzene in various brands of sunscreens, including some Neutrogena spray-on products. J&J pulled popular brands including Neutrogena and Aveeno off shelves within months out of what it called “an abundance of caution,” saying the benzene levels it measured were low.

But an internal FDA document showed the agency classified the benzene levels in J&J sunscreens as “life threatening.” The agency didn’t share that information with consumers at the time. The document came to light through a public records request.

A spokesperson for the FDA said that drugmakers are responsible for developing their own recall strategies, including whether a public warning is needed and when to issue it.

Braylan’s father, Dory Brendan Hux, later sued Johnson & Johnson, arguing the company’s spray-on sunscreens were contaminated with dangerously high levels of benzene. Even in small doses, benzene spurs DNA mutations that lead to cancer.

J&J settled the suit for an undisclosed amount earlier this year. Hux didn’t return requests for comment. A representative for J&J referred to Kenvue, its consumer brands spin-off, for questions. Kenvue didn’t respond to requests for comment.

When asked about the myriad contaminants found in personal care products, an FDA spokesperson said the agency enforces what are called "Current Good Manufacturing Practice" regulatory standards. Manufacturers are responsible for detecting and limiting contaminants in their products. Protecting patient health is the FDA’s top priority, an agency spokesperson said.

Federal law doesn’t give the agency power to force a recall. Instead, companies use their own discretion to decide when to pull contaminated products off shelves.

Inertia

As more contamination findings have emerged, it doesn’t appear their makers are reacting as quickly as J&J did. Rather, companies and the FDA are questioning the lab that often finds the toxins.

Valisure tests various products and asks the FDA to recall any it finds to be contaminated. The private lab makes money by partnering with organizations, like health plans and the US Department of Defense, to test the quality of drugs they give their members.

After Valisure discovered benzene in widely used benzoyl peroxide acne products like Proactiv and Clearasil in March, the FDA and consumer-goods makers said the lab didn’t test the products in real-world conditions. Valisure has said its testing meets international standards and it gets its test results checked by another lab.

The FDA says it’s doing its own testing on the acne products but didn’t give a timeline for completion. The acne cream makers, companies like Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. and Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc, declined to comment when asked if they were testing or reformulating the creams. There haven’t been any recalls. A spokesperson for Reckitt said its Clearasil products are safe when used and stored at room temperature.

“It’s very frustrating because the FDA isn’t doing its job, which is to protect consumers,” said Jason Richards, an attorney in Florida who is representing several people who say they used contaminated benzoyl peroxide products.

One of his clients, who asked not to be named discussing his lifelong acne, had been using a benzoyl peroxide face wash his dermatologist recommended for a few months before the news of the contamination broke. He is seeking financial damages for a product he alleges he was deceived into buying and thinks companies should have to disclose this kind of information on labels.

New allegations keep emerging. Two new lawsuits filed this year against J&J and Kenvue allege their Neutrogena T/Gel dandruff shampoo has “dangerously high, undisclosed levels of benzene.” The lawsuits cite test results, but doesn’t say who tested the products or why. The shampoo contains coal tar, which the companies say reduces overproduction of scalp skin cells. It’s derived from fossil fuel, which may explain the links to benzene.

The FDA didn’t answer questions on the shampoo’s safety and Kenvue did not respond to a request for comment.

Public Eye

Even when findings of contamination generate a lot of publicity, things don’t necessarily change quickly — or at all.

A study in July showed lead in 14 different widely used brands of tampons along with arsenic, mercury and copper. It went viral on social media.

But for weeks, nothing happened. In September, several members of Congress called on the FDA to take action. “The findings of this study are alarming and highlight the urgent need for stricter safety standards,” US Representative Summer Lee, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, said.

A day later, the FDA said it would study whether the metals were released by tampons during use. An agency spokesperson said the tests are underway and that they’ll share results after they’re “peer reviewed,” meaning vetted by outside experts. That process can take months. The FDA has also conducted a review of existing studies on contaminants in tampons.

Kathrin Schilling, senior author of the study and assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, said the International Organization for Standardization, which sets benchmarks for everything from electronics to medicine, contacted her and her colleagues about their research. The ISO is seeking to devise new standards for tampons.

Schilling says she hasn’t heard from the FDA.

The tampon researchers didn’t name the exact products they examined, but the work involved 30 tampons from 14 different brands. No tampon brands have been recalled since the research was published.

Part of the problem in regulating over-the-counter products is in how the FDA is funded. The agency’s budget is divided into different buckets for prescription and non-prescription drugs, which covers many personal care products. The agency’s work is funded, in part, by fees it charges companies to review new product applications and the industry has a say in how the FDA spends it.

Prescription drugs, which go through a rigorous approval process, brought in more than $1.5 billion through industry fees in the last financial year, which ended in September. That money funds about 5,000 FDA employees to work on prescription drugs. Nonprescription drugs aren’t subject to the same approval reviews, though, so they only brought in $30 million a year in fees during the same time period, funding just 93 workers, according to FDA budget documents. Yet there are twice as many over-the-counter drugs than prescription ones.

“We need to be minding the store more,” said Robin Dodson, associate director of research operations at the Silent Spring Institute, an environmental and women’s health research group. “If we’re going to ask the FDA to do that, they need the resources.”