After cancer scare, man develops natural sunblock

The active ingredients are minerals that reflect harmful rays.

Scripps Howard News Service

BONITA SPRINGS, Fla. — They say good things can come from adversity. That seems to be the case for Peter Zahner, who developed a line of natural sunscreen after a bout with basal cell carcinoma.

A Bonita Springs resident and native of Switzerland, Zahner became somewhat of a self-educated expert on sunscreens in the years after his diagnosis. Finally, in 2002, dissatisfied with the way most sunscreens performed and increasingly skeptical about their safety, he set up a makeshift laboratory in his home to come up with a better product. By 2005 he had hit upon the formula for MelanSol, made from 100 percent natural ingredients.

“I learned that sunlight is actually vital for good health and vitamin D absorption and in the right amounts it is healing,” he said. “And I learned as well that all ingredients that are not natural harm or interrupt health and healing.”

Zahner, 64 and a mechanical engineer by trade, has sold about 30,000 bottles of MelanSol since he started marketing it about a year ago. Today he has distributors in Canada and Switzerland, and is working to firm up a deal with one in the United States.

“The goal was to filter a reasonable amount of UV radiation and fight free radicals with antioxidants,” he said.

Zahner said he started researching sunscreens after discovering that the ones on the market irritated the area along his jawline where the basal cell carcinoma had taken root. It made him wonder what else they were doing to his body.

Then he found studies — some dating back to the 1970s — that indicated there were increased rates of skin cancer in countries where sunscreens are heavily marketed. Though such a link has not been medically proven, it made sense to Zahner.

“If you put something all over your body it only makes sense that your body absorbs it,” he said. “I wanted a natural product that was free of chemicals and wouldn’t be harmful.”

Of the 16 UV-filter ingredients the Food and Drug Administration has approved in order for a product to be called a sunscreen, 14 create a film on the skin that absorbs the UV radiation and two reflect it. MelanSol’s active ingredients are the two physical, or mineral, ingredients that reflect the rays instead of absorbing them — primarily zinc oxide, but also a small amount of titanium dioxide.

MelanSol also contains bio-melanin, which is extracted from the fruit of the date palm and mimics the melanin the body produces naturally. Zahner said the ingredient reduces free radicals, helping to counteract the harmful consequences of UV radiation such as the breakdown of collagen and skin structure.

Miles Chedekel, owner of Mel-Co in Palm Springs, Calif., produces bio-melanin and other ingredients, such as mineral proteins for skin nutrition and plant extracts for the certified organic and vegan market. Mel-Co is the source for the bio-melanin in MelanSol.

“Melanin is the single most important thing that protects the skin from the sun’s damaging effects,” he said. “It’s the natural pigment in the skin. It’s a natural, not a synthetic, chemical or a mineral.”

MelanSol is one of just a few sunscreens that contain it, he said, although it’s found often in much higher concentrations in sunless tanners.