Australia’s medicines regulator has proposed changes to how sunscreen SPF ratings are tested and labelled, after consumer testing found several products claiming SPF 50 protection fell well short of that figure in practice. The proposal has reignited scrutiny of how much Australians can actually trust the number on the bottle.
What the testing actually found
Consumer group Choice tested a range of popular sunscreens in 2025 and found discrepancies between labelled and actual UV protection levels, prompting the Therapeutic Goods Administration to recommend tighter oversight of the laboratories that conduct SPF testing in the first place.
The gap between claimed and tested SPF varied across products, but even a moderate shortfall matters given how heavily sunscreen is relied on as the primary line of defence for most Australians during peak UV months, when a few percentage points of protection can be the difference in cumulative annual exposure. 
The TGA’s proposed reforms include more reliable testing procedures, stronger lab oversight, and a controversial suggestion to replace numerical SPF ratings with categorical labels such as low, medium, high and very high coverage, rather than the specific numbers Australians are used to reading.
Several of the products flagged in testing were mainstream brands widely stocked in supermarkets and pharmacies, not niche products consumers might already treat with scepticism. That’s part of why the findings drew as much attention as they did: they undercut a level of trust most shoppers hadn’t previously questioned.
Why the numbers on labels matter so much here
In a country where one melanoma diagnosis occurs roughly every 30 minutes and more than 2,000 people die annually from skin cancer, the accuracy of sunscreen labelling isn’t a minor consumer protection issue. Choice has said it commends the TGA’s move while pushing back on scrapping numerical SPF figures entirely, arguing specificity still has value for consumers comparing products.
That tension, between simplified labelling and precise data, will likely shape how the reforms are finalised, but in the meantime it leaves consumers with a reasonable question about whether sunscreen alone is a sufficient defence, or whether it should be paired with more regular professional monitoring.
Application technique compounds the labelling problem further. Even a correctly rated sunscreen underperforms its stated SPF when applied too thinly or too infrequently, an issue independent of any testing controversy but one that becomes more relevant once consumers start questioning label accuracy generally.
What this means beyond the sunscreen aisle
Sunscreen reliability issues don’t change the fundamentals of skin cancer prevention, but they do reinforce why professional skin monitoring remains necessary even for people who are diligent about applying sunscreen daily. A product performing below its labelled SPF means years of assumed protection may have been less complete than believed.
For anyone reconsidering their sun protection routine in light of the testing results, regular skin cancer screening Brisbane clinics provide is the more reliable backstop, since it catches problems regardless of how effective any individual sunscreen product turned out to be.
That backstop matters most for people who have relied heavily on one of the products flagged in testing, since years of assumed protection may not have matched the coverage they believed they had. A professional skin check is the only way to actually verify whether that gap has had any consequence.
The TGA’s final position on numerical versus categorical labelling is still pending, but the lesson from the testing saga is straightforward: sunscreen labels have proven an imperfect proxy for actual protection, and professional skin checks remain the more dependable safeguard. Whatever the final label format looks like, it won’t retroactively fix years of underprotection for anyone who unknowingly used an underperforming product.
