Do you still have a bottle of sunscreen from last year in your bathroom cabinet? While you might think you need a new one, sunscreen will last longer than you think. Check the expiration date if there is one. If not, you have three years from the date of purchase to use it.
That advice is coming direct from the FDASunscreen manufacturers are hereby requested to provide an expiry date for their product, which indicates when it will no longer offer the level of protection indicated on the label. If there is no date, it means that tests have shown that it should be valid for three years after purchase.
Sunscreens that are older may or may not have lost their effectiveness. Since this is a game of chance, the FDA recommends using sunscreens that are over the three-year limit or past their expiration date. If there’s no expiration date, but you can remember buying it last year or even two years ago – on a pre-pandemic vacation, for example – it’s probably still as good as new.
Ironically, while we’re talking about storage, the FDA recommends keeping sunscreen bottles out of the sun. Extreme heat can cause the product to deteriorate prematurely. They therefore recommend leaving the sunscreen in the shade or wrapping it in towels on the beach. You can also put it in a cooler to be extra safe.
This post was first published in May 2017 and updated on May 14, 2021 to review links, add information, and adapt to current Lifehacker style.
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