I Bought My Sunscreen in Paris. Now One of Its Star Ingredients Is Finally Coming to America.

Earlier this summer, I stocked up on sunscreen while I was in France. Not because I knew anything about the ingredients, I just love French sunscreen. It's light, it feels great on my skin, and somehow SPF 50 doesn't feel like, well, SPF 50.

So I was pretty excited to learn that one of the UV filters in all three of the sunscreens I brought home was just approved by the FDA for use in U.S. sunscreens.

It's called bemotrizinol. Europeans have been using it for decades.

So what is it, what's so great about it, and—most importantly—when can we buy it here?

Bemotrizinol (also known as BEMT) is an organic—or what we typically call "chemical"—sunscreen filter that protects against both UVA and UVB rays.

If you're looking for it on the back of a French sunscreen bottle, however, you won't find the word "bemotrizinol." Its official ingredient name is the much less memorable Bis-Ethylhexyloxyphenol Methoxyphenyl Triazine.

You may also have heard it called Tinosorb S, but that's actually BASF's brand name for its version of the ingredient. Another manufacturer, dsm-firmenich, sells it as PARSOL Shield.

Bemotrizinol has been used in sunscreens outside the U.S. since 1999. In June, the FDA finally approved it for use in American sunscreens at concentrations up to 6 percent.

And this is kind of a big deal: it's the first new sunscreen active ingredient approved for use in the U.S. in more than 25 years.

So what's so great about it?

For starters, bemotrizinol offers broad-spectrum protection, absorbing both UVA and UVB rays.

UVB is responsible for most sunburns and plays a major role in skin cancer. UVA penetrates more deeply into the skin and contributes to premature aging, pigmentation and skin cancer. We want protection from both.

But one of the things that makes bemotrizinol especially interesting is that it's also extremely photostable.

In other words, it holds up very well when exposed to sunlight, which is obviously a pretty useful characteristic for an ingredient whose job is to protect you from sunlight.

Compare that with avobenzone, which has long been one of the primary UVA filters available to U.S. sunscreen makers. Avobenzone provides excellent UVA protection, but on its own it breaks down relatively quickly when exposed to UV light. Sunscreen formulators compensate for this by combining it with ingredients that help stabilize it.

Bemotrizinol doesn't have that problem. It's highly photostable and can also help stabilize other UV filters in a sunscreen formula.

Another advantage? Very little of it appears to get through your skin and into your body. Low systemic absorption was one of the characteristics the FDA evaluated before approving it, along with its low potential for skin irritation.

So we have an ingredient that protects against UVA and UVB, holds up exceptionally well in sunlight and has very low systemic absorption.

You can see why sunscreen chemists like it.

Is this why French sunscreen feels so much better?

It’s not that simple. I would love to say I've discovered the magic ingredient responsible for making my French sunscreens feel so good, but texture is the result of the entire formula, not one UV filter.

What bemotrizinol does do is give sunscreen formulators another really useful tool.

European sunscreen makers have had access to a much larger selection of modern UV filters than U.S. manufacturers. More choices give chemists more ways to balance UVA and UVB protection, stability, transparency, water resistance and how the sunscreen actually feels.

And that's important. Because the best sunscreen is the one you'll actually wear. If it's thick, greasy or leaves a white cast, chances are you're going to use less of it. Or skip it altogether.

The three SPF 50+ sunscreens I brought home from France all contain bemotrizinol, but they feel completely different from one another. One of my Avène products is actually a serum and feels more like skincare than sunscreen.

If it's so great, why couldn't we have it?

The FDA didn't just discover bemotrizinol. In fact, the first application to bring Tinosorb S to the U.S. dates back to 2005.

The difference largely comes down to how sunscreen is regulated.

In the U.S., sunscreen active ingredients are regulated by the FDA as over-the-counter drugs. In Europe, sunscreens fall under cosmetics regulations. As a result, getting a new sunscreen ingredient approved here has historically been a much more complicated process.

That process changed after Congress modernized the OTC drug review system in 2020.

dsm-firmenich subsequently submitted the additional data needed for the FDA to evaluate bemotrizinol. The FDA reviewed the evidence and determined that it could be considered safe and effective under the specified conditions of use.

So it's not that the FDA looked at all of Europe's newer sunscreen filters and decided bemotrizinol was the best. It's just the first one to successfully make it through the new process.

Which makes me hopeful that it won't be the last.

Can I stop bringing sunscreen home from France?

Not quite yet.

The FDA order allowing bemotrizinol in U.S. sunscreens took effect in August 2026, so sunscreen manufacturers can now begin using it in qualifying U.S. formulations.

The ingredient itself is also becoming available to manufacturers here. dsm-firmenich sells its version as PARSOL Shield, while BASF is bringing its familiar Tinosorb S to the U.S. market.

That means the brands we already know will have the option of incorporating bemotrizinol into future U.S. products.

But they can't simply put the European formula in an American bottle tomorrow. New sunscreens still have to be formulated, tested, manufactured, packaged and distributed.

So while bemotrizinol is officially here, we'll have to wait a little longer to see what sunscreen companies do with it.

And I'm genuinely excited to find out.