Yes, sunscreen can expire and when it does, it's not as protective. Read more : Should you use chemical or mineral sunscreen? The Food and Drug Administration mandates that all sunscreens maintain their full strength for three years -- so, if you have leftover sunscreen at the end of the summer, you should be able to safely use it for two more summers. Some sunscreen manufacturers print the expiration date on the bottle or label, but not all do.
When you buy a bottle of sunscreen, check for an expiration date. If it doesn't have one, write the date of purchase in permanent marker. Also take note of the period-after-opening symbol , which tells you how long a product stays fresh once opened.
It typically looks like a jar with the lid off and a number, which indicates the number of months after you open it that it's usable.
Theoretically, if you're using sunscreen in the recommended way -- putting it on any bare skin when you go into direct sunlight for any length of time, and reapplying it periodically -- you shouldn't have much left over year to year. If you have a bottle of sunscreen that you're not sure about, use your best judgement: When's the last time you remember using that sunscreen?
Does the bottle itself seem old? Golda says. That means a 5- or 6-ounce bottle could be gone after just one day in the sun! This summer, be kind to your skin by seeking out shade, wearing protective clothing, and applying SPF you know will work as intended. Restock your sunscreen supply now with these formulas that got the thumbs-up in our most recent Good Housekeeping Institute tests :. Product Reviews. Home Ideas. United States. Type keyword s to search. Today's Top Stories. Wondering if you can use that bottle of sunscreen from last summer?
What about the summer before that? Finding a sunscreen's expiration date is not always an easy task. On some bottles, you can find a tiny open jar icon along with a number that indicates the expiration date, according to The Sun.
Other brands print the date in tiny, white letters on the back of the bottle that are easy to miss if you don't know where to look. Still others print a code on the bottom of the bottle that can require knowing the company's system in order to tell when the product expires. Unfortunately, this isn't the case for all sunscreens, but this travel-sized Banana Boat Sport sunscreen is one example of an easy-to-spot expiration date. Some sunscreens, such as Banana Boat, print a code on the bottom of the bottle — but you have to decipher it first.
According to Banana Boat's website, the first two numbers of the code indicate the year the sunscreen was produced, and the next three letters indicate the day of the year produced. The code on the Banana Boat Sport spray sunscreen below, for example, seems to indicate that the sunscreen was manufactured in , on the 13th day of the year.
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