Hawaii's Sunscreen Rules, and What They Have Changed So Far

What the state law says

Hawaii's sunscreen law is Act 104 of the Session Laws of Hawaii 2018, signed by Gov. David Ige and codified at section 342D-21 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes. Its operative sentence is short: beginning January 1, 2021, it is unlawful to sell, offer for sale, or distribute for sale in the State any sunscreen that contains oxybenzone or octinoxate, or both, without a prescription from a licensed healthcare provider.¹

The law is often described more broadly than it is written, so its limits need stating:

• It regulates sale and distribution, not use. The statute does not make it illegal to wear a sunscreen containing oxybenzone or octinoxate, and it does not stop visitors from bringing one with them.
• It names two chemicals. Oxybenzone and octinoxate are the only ingredients covered.
• It has a prescription exception. Sunscreens containing those ingredients may still be sold to someone with a prescription.
• It excludes face cosmetics. "Sunscreen" in the statute does not include products marketed as cosmetics for the face.

What the state did not do

It is widely repeated that Hawaii later banned avobenzone and octocrylene statewide. It did not. Bills introduced in the 2021 legislative session, including SB132 and HB102, would have added those two ingredients, but they were not enacted, and the current statute still names only oxybenzone and octinoxate.^1,2

Lawmakers tried a different approach in 2022. Bills that session would have prohibited sunscreens containing any active ingredient the FDA has not classed as generally recognized as safe and effective, which in practice would have meant mineral-only sales statewide. One Senate version was deferred indefinitely in committee after the Attorney General's Office raised concerns, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.³ The state law remains the two-chemical rule of 2018.

Two counties went further

The broader rules in Hawaii come from county governments, and they differ from each other.

Maui County. Ordinance No. 5306, effective October 1, 2022, bans the sale, distribution, and use of any "non-mineral sunscreen" without a prescription. A non-mineral sunscreen is one with any active ingredient other than zinc oxide or titanium dioxide.^4,5 That reaches avobenzone, octocrylene, and every other chemical filter, but it does so through a mineral-only rule, not by adding names to a list. Unlike the state law, Maui's ordinance also covers use, meaning applying such a sunscreen in the county, which includes Maui, Molokaʻi, and Lānaʻi. County officials said at the time that enforcement would emphasize public education over penalties.⁶

Hawaiʻi County. On the Big Island, Ordinance 22-81 (Bill 167) took effect December 1, 2022. It makes it unlawful to provide, sell, offer for sale, or distribute non-mineral sunscreen without a prescription, with fines of up to $1,000 per incident; the fine revenue is directed to mineral-sunscreen dispensers and education. Unlike Maui's ordinance, it does not ban personal use. The council passed it 6–2, and it became law without the mayor's signature.⁷

Oʻahu and Kauaʻi. As far as we could verify, neither the City and County of Honolulu nor Kauaʻi County has adopted a mineral-only ordinance. Both remain under the statewide rule alone.

What the evidence shows so far

The policy question is whether these rules have reduced the chemicals in Hawaii's coastal waters, and whether reefs are better for it. The published evidence is limited and mixed.

The baseline. A study published in Chemosphere by Downs and colleagues analyzed water collected at Hanauma Bay in 2017, before the sales ban. It found oxybenzone in near-shore water at 30 to 27,880 nanograms per liter, levels the authors said could threaten the bay's coral reef. It also identified the beach showers as a source, and modeling suggested contamination from a single day could remain in the bay for up to 50 hours.^8,9 These are pre-ban figures. They describe the problem the law was meant to address, not its results.

After the law. In November 2021, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported that sunscreen chemicals were still being found at Hanauma Bay after the law took effect, including oxybenzone and octocrylene, which the state law does not cover. The report noted that visitors can still bring products containing the restricted ingredients into the state.¹⁰

A before-and-after comparison. A University of Hawaiʻi thesis measured oxybenzone and octocrylene at four South Shore beaches on Oʻahu and at Hanauma Bay during the period when the sales ban took effect. Both chemicals were detected, with high variation across a single day. Oxybenzone ranged from about 1 to 1,007 nanograms per liter at the South Shore sites and from about 2 to 1,942 at Hanauma Bay. When the author compared South Shore concentrations before and after the ban, the differences were site-dependent, not a uniform decline.¹¹

The same study explains why a clean answer is hard to obtain. The ban took effect while pandemic travel restrictions were being lifted, beaches were reopening, and Hanauma Bay's management practices were changing.¹¹ Visitor numbers and sunscreen rules changed together, so a simple before-and-after comparison cannot separate the effect of the law from the effect of the pandemic.

Sales. We could not find a reputable published study quantifying how statewide retail sunscreen sales shifted after Act 104. Published sales-impact figures are limited, and we are not going to supply one.

Reefs. We found no published study showing that Hawaii's reefs have recovered because of the law, and it would be wrong to claim that they have. Reefs respond to many pressures at once, ocean temperature above all, and attributing a change to a single policy would require data that do not yet exist.

Other places, in the right order

Hawaii's 2018 law is often credited with starting a movement. The record is more complicated, because several other jurisdictions acted in the same period and some of their rules took effect first.

• Palau. The Responsible Tourism Education Act of 2018 prohibited the manufacture, import, and sale of "reef-toxic" sunscreens, and bringing them into the country, with the sales ban effective January 1, 2020. It covers oxybenzone, octinoxate, and other listed ingredients. That was a year before Hawaii's sales ban began.¹²
• U.S. Virgin Islands. Act 8185 (2019) restricts sunscreens containing oxybenzone, octinoxate, and octocrylene. Imports for retail were restricted as of September 30, 2019, and the main sales restriction took effect March 30, 2020, after Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. vetoed a delay. It took effect before Hawaii's ban and includes octocrylene, which Hawaii's statewide law does not.¹³
• Key West, Florida. The City Commission voted in February 2019 to ban the sale of sunscreens containing oxybenzone or octinoxate, beginning January 1, 2021.¹⁴ In 2020, Florida enacted SB 172, which reserved the regulation of over-the-counter drugs and cosmetics to the state.¹⁵ The Key West ban never took effect.

These were contemporaneous efforts that drew on the same body of research. Hawaii passed its law first; Palau and the Virgin Islands put theirs into force sooner; and Florida moved in the opposite direction.

Why the policy still matters

Limited evidence of effect is not evidence of no effect. The honest position is that the data are not yet good enough to say either way. What the rules have clearly done is change what is on the shelf in the places they cover, particularly in Maui and Hawaiʻi counties, and establish that a government can regulate sunscreen ingredients on environmental grounds.

The research so far also suggests where a sales ban falls short. It does not reach what visitors bring with them, it leaves other chemical filters in use across most of the state, and it does nothing about pathways such as beach showers. Whether the county mineral-only rules do better is a question that sustained monitoring could answer.

Where Sunspi fits

Sunspi's connection to this is modest. Our booth, developed by Embry-Riddle engineers and UGA premedical and medical students, applies a full, even coat of sunscreen from the neck down in seconds, for a few dollars, and it dispenses only reef-safe sunscreen; the face and scalp are done separately by hand. A demo is coming soon. We would like protecting your skin and choosing a formula that is easier on the water to be the same decision, wherever the local law happens to stand.