Parents allege sunscreen products caused severe reactions

Rebecca Cannon's photos of her 14-month-old daughter, Kyla, earlier this month. (Rebecca Cannon)

A mother in Newfoundland says her toddler daughter developed second-degree burns on her face after using Banana Boat Kids sunscreen, and now, Health Canada is looking into the report.

Rebecca Cannon, from Botwood, N.L. recently posted pictures on Facebook of her 14-month-old daughter, Kyla, showing the girl with a swollen, red and blistered face.

Cannon said in her post that the girl developed second-degree burns after she applied Banana Boat Kids SPF 50 sunscreen spray..

In a statement to CTV News, Health Canada said it was made aware of the case on May 12 and has been in contact with Edgewell Personal Care, the company that owns the Banana Boat brand.

The health agency is also in contact with another mother, Caroline Morneau, of Cacouna, Que. According to a Facebook post by Morneau, her nine-month-old son, Loic, also developed blistering on his face after using a different Banana Boat product: Baby sunscreen SPF 60 lotion.

In a statement to CTV News, Edgewell Personal Care says all Banana Boat products undergo testing to make sure they're appropriately labelled and meet relevant health regulations.

In the statement, they wrote:“Because all Banana Boat sunscreens are a neutral pH, they are safe for human skin and can’t cause chemical burns, which are sometimes mistakenly linked to personal care products or confused with sunburns.”

The company said they take all consumers’ concerns seriously and their quality assurance team will thoroughly investigate to understand what happened in such cases.

Their statement added: “We always recommend that people who have concerns about a burn visit a dermatologist who can determine the type of burn or reaction and advise on appropriate treatment. We encourage anyone with a concern to contact us directly at 1-800-723-3786.”

Cheryl Rosen, a clinical dermatologist at Toronto Western Hospital and a spokesperson for the Canadian Dermatology Association, says it appears to her the children are having irritant or allergic reactions to one or more ingredients in the sunscreens.

“It might be one of the sunscreens -- the ingredients doing the UV absorbing – but it could also be a fragrance ingredient, or a preservative, that is irritating to these children,” she told CTVNews.ca.

It may be that exposure to the ultraviolet (UV) light in sunlight prompts the reaction; in that case, it would be called a photoallergy.

She says that just because some children have reactions to a skin product doesn’t mean all children will react the same way.

“There are likely lots of kids who are using the product without a problem, just like there are some kids who are allergic to parabens, but not everyone is,” she said.

People who have no known skin allergies should be able to use any sunscreen product, she added.

As for the seriousness of the reaction, Rosen noted even contact with poison ivy can result in painful blistering in some people, but only a mild rash in others.

Her advice to parents who are worried their child might develop a reaction to a sunscreen or who have had trouble themselves with sunscreen is to try applying the product to a small patch of skin then see if they have a reaction.