Does Sunscreen Work After Its Expiration Date

Hello, I’m Dr. Neal Schultz and welcome to DermTV.

People think they need to throw out their sunscreen immediately after the expiration date but that’s not so. It really does continue to work as an effective sunscreen for a long amount of time after that time. An expiration date is just the amount of time, usually a year or two years that the manufacturer demonstrated and tested that the sunscreen still works, but it doesn’t stop working, it doesn’t stop being an effective sunscreen the day after the expiration date. In fact, for weeks, months or maybe even years after the expiration date, you can still use that sunscreen and it will give you the full protection that you expected from it when it was first originally manufactured. So the take-away here is, it’s much more important to use sunscreen and use it every day than to be guided by the expiration date on the bottle.