Mineral sunscreens marketed with "no white cast" claims are failing consumers of color, and a regulatory loophole lets brands keep saying it. Refinery29 maps the gap between marketing and formulation.
The sunscreen industry has a credibility problem, and it's playing out on the faces of consumers of color. Brands marketing mineral SPFs with promises of "no white cast" or "invisible" finishes are systematically failing the deeper skin tones they claim to include, and the regulatory framework lets them get away with it.
The conventional wisdom in clean beauty circles holds that mineral sunscreens are the safer, smarter pick. The reporting complicates that story considerably.
A viral video from cosmetic scientist Dr. Julian Sass called out Tower 28's SOS FaceGuard SPF 30 for its "no white cast" claims. Tower 28 founder Amy Liu acknowledged on Instagram that the brand's claims were inaccurate and pledged to remove the problematic language.
Tower 28 is not alone. CeraVe, SkinCeuticals, and Merit's The Uniform Tinted Mineral Sunscreen have all faced criticism over similar claims. Esthetician Dija Ayodele, founder of the Black Skin Directory, described the unflattering appearance Merit's product left on her skin despite its invisibility claims.
The technical issue is straightforward. The FDA only permits two UV filters for mineral sunscreens, titanium dioxide and zinc oxide, both white pigments. Making those filters truly invisible at protective concentrations is technically possible but expensive, and most brands aren't investing in the formulation work required to deliver on the promise across the full range of skin tones.
The regulatory gap compounds the problem. There are no rules governing the terms white cast or invisible on sunscreen labels, unlike water resistance, which requires standardized testing — products labeled "water resistant" must demonstrate maintained SPF after 40 or 80 minutes of immersion, with the duration printed on the label. A comparable framework for invisibility claims could require brands to test products across a representative range of Fitzpatrick skin types (I through VI), publish colorimetric measurements of cast at the recommended application density of 2 mg/cm², and disclose which skin tones the product was actually validated against. The infrastructure for this kind of testing already exists in adjacent industries: the foundation category has spent the last decade being held accountable for shade-range disclosure, and dermatology research routinely uses standardized phototype panels. Australia, which operates the world's strictest sunscreen regulatory regime through the TGA, requires sunscreens to be registered as therapeutic goods with substantiated performance claims — a model that treats sun protection as the public health product it is, not a cosmetic with cosmetic levels of oversight. Cosmetic chemist Milan Scott put the consequences of the current US approach plainly: "Entire groups of people are excluded from sun protection options because brands don't think it's profitable to include us."
Scott goes further, framing the dynamic as a public health issue. Chemical sunscreens, which often perform better on darker skin tones, have been stigmatized by fear-based "clean beauty" marketing that positions mineral formulas as inherently safer. Scott has characterized the dynamics as a form of medical racism, noting how marketing decisions exclude entire communities from effective sun protection options.
Ayodele's prescription is honesty over false inclusivity: brands should be willing to say a given product isn't right for everyone and point customers toward alternatives in their range that are. That kind of transparency is rare in beauty marketing, where the incentive structure rewards the broadest possible claim.
For the conscious-consumer space, this story is a useful corrective to the assumption that "clean" and "inclusive" are synonyms. A product can be reef-friendly, mineral-based, and beautifully packaged, and still leave a meaningful slice of its potential customers ashy or unprotected. The fix isn't ideological — it's actionable. Readers can demand three concrete things. From brands: published shade-range testing data, plain-language disclosure when a product wasn't formulated for deeper skin tones, and an end to blanket "invisible" claims unsupported by evidence. From the FDA: a rulemaking process that brings invisibility and finish claims under the same standardized-testing umbrella as water resistance, with diverse-skin-tone panels written into the protocol. And from retailers, who currently amplify these claims unchallenged: a refusal to merchandise "no white cast" language without substantiation, the same way major beauty retailers now require shade-range minimums from foundation brands. Until those pressures land, the burden will continue to fall where it has always fallen — on the consumers being marketed to and left out in the same breath.
