Reef-safe sunscreen laws, quoted from the law
Four jurisdictions, what each one actually restricts, and the difference between a rule about selling sunscreen and a rule about wearing it.
Most published guidance on this subject paraphrases other published guidance. That is how one sentence about Hawaii — taken from a bill that never became law — ended up repeated across hundreds of travel pages as though it were the statute. Every quotation below was read from the issuing body’s own text: the Hawaii Legislature’s compilation of the Revised Statutes, the signed Maui County ordinance, and the Florida Legislature’s statutes.
The distinction that matters most is not which chemicals are named. It is whether a law reaches use or only sale. Hawaii’s statewide law is a commerce law: it restricts selling, and says nothing about what a visitor may wear. Maui County’s ordinance is not — it reaches application by any person. A property deciding what to put on a pool deck is asking the second question, and almost every summary answers the first.
What each jurisdiction restricts
| Jurisdiction | What it restricts | Reaches use? | In force |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hawaii (statewide) | Sale, offer for sale and distribution for sale of sunscreen containing oxybenzone or octinoxate, without a prescription. | No — commerce only | 1 January 2021 |
| Maui County | Sale, distribution for sale, provision at County facilities and County-permitted events, and use or application by any person, of any non-mineral sunscreen, without a prescription. | Yes — reaches use | 1 October 2022 |
| Key West, Florida | Nothing, in practice. The City passed an ordinance in 2019; Florida expressly preempted local regulation of over-the-counter drugs to the state in 2020. | No — commerce only | Preempted since 1 July 2020 |
| Hawaiʻi County (Big Island) | Not published here. Ordinance 22-81 is reported to restrict non-mineral sunscreen, and reported to reach sale and distribution but NOT use. We have not published those details because hawaiicounty.gov blocks automated retrieval and every copy we can reach is a third-party reproduction. Whether "use" was struck is exactly the detail a reproduction gets wrong, and exactly the detail a property would rely on. | Not established | Reported as 1 December 2022 |
Jurisdictions we have not published
These are commonly listed in reef-safe sunscreen round-ups. We have left them out because we could not reach the enacted instrument, and a destination’s rules are not something to paraphrase from a travel article. That is a statement about our sourcing, not a statement that these places have no rules.
- Aruba
- The Landsverordening is dated 27 November 2019, but it defers commencement to a landsbesluit we could not retrieve. The universally repeated "in force July 2020" cannot be traced to a primary instrument.
- Palau
- The Regulations define the banned list by reference to "the Appendix of this regulation", and the PDF published by the government ends without the Appendix attached. The operative ingredient list is not publicly retrievable.
- U.S. Virgin Islands
- Act 8185’s text is not publicly reachable — the territory’s PDF endpoint refuses connections and the V.I. Code sits behind a paywall. Everything available is departmental statement rather than enacted text.
- Bonaire
- A motion was adopted in May 2018, but we could locate no enacted island ordinance implementing it. We can neither say there is a ban nor say there is none.
The one line that causes the most confusion
Hawaii’s statute defines the word “sunscreen” more narrowly than most readers expect, and the definition carries a carve-out that is easy to miss:
"Sunscreen" means a product marketed or intended for topical use to prevent sunburn. Sunscreen does not include products marketed or intended for use as a cosmetic, as defined in section 328-1, for the face.
Hawaii State Legislature · read word for word on The exemption turns on how a product is marketed, not on where it is applied. A product marketed to prevent sunburn on the face is still a sunscreen and is still covered.
For what the term “reef-safe” means as a matter of formulation rather than law — which filters are implicated, and why the term is not a certification — see our guide to reef-safe sunscreen.
Every quotation on this page was read from the issuing body’s own text, not from a summary. This page was last reviewed end to end on . Each quotation carries its own source and the date that text was read.
This page describes what published instruments say. It is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for the agency that administers each one.
Other jurisdictions
- Hawaii (statewide)
HRS §342D-21 — oxybenzone and octinoxate, sale only.
- Maui County
MCC ch. 20.42 — mineral only, and it reaches use.
- Key West, Florida
Preempted by Fla. Stat. §499.002(7) since 2020.
- What “reef-safe” means
The ingredients, the science and the term itself — separate from what any law requires.