Like clockwork, the Environmental Working Group — an apparently well-funded and certainly well-applauded — activist group, which claims to be a scientific research organization of sorts, recently sent out their latest fear-mongering news release around the globe.

This time, sunscreen is not safe for you, according to the reporting in all manner of news media and the blogosphere (with rare exceptions), reporting which was based on EWG’s latest foray into anti-chemical hyperbole.

The devil is in the details, as is usual with EWG. The group excels at generating fear over potential unknowns and minute amounts of chemicals and naturally occurring elements.

Minute concentrations of chemicals and elements may or may not be harmful — frequently, they are not — but that doesn’t stand in the way of EWG’s promotion of the speculative: “Any amount of a chemical must be bad because the chemical itself is bad,” is the position the group exists to make.

Regular readers of The Good, The Bad, The Spin hopefully will remember EWG just months ago promoted a similar perspective, that tap water was harmful to consumers because of trace amounts of chemicals in the water. The group’s pitch was dovetailed nicely by the New York Times, which handily took EWG’s dubious data, republished it without verification by official sources, and was rewarded for this work with an interview on NPR.

The problem at that time is that many water purveyors that were given a black eye by the EWG /New York Times punched back, at one point putting an EWG representative on the defensive. Her response was to encourage consumers to drink bottled water. This was despite the group’s insistence in its previous news release campaign, a year prior, that bottled water was harmful to consumers.

So here we are again.

Neglected or buried in the reporting of EWG’s anti-sunscreen exaggerations is the most salient of points: Sunscreens, which may or may not contain harmful chemicals, are far better for you for what they are designed to do — prevent skin cancer, something that is known and is well-supported by research — than any potential side-effect from what is in sunscreens.

Never mind. The EWG mission was fulfilled. At the end of Susan Carpenter’s rewrite of the EWG news release in the LA Times is this clever dose of salesmanship:

“Most consumers continue to purchase traditional products. Indeed, natural sunscreens currently account for only a tiny percentage of the sun-care market, according to Karen Grant, global industry analyst and vice president of beauty for the NPD Group, a market research firm. ‘It’s still very niche. We haven’t seen a lot of products from the big players in this area,’ said Grant, adding that Bare Escentuals is the only mainstream, high-end sunscreen manufacturer she’s aware of that produces a natural sunscreen.

“Natural products are primarily available online and at specialty stores and grocers such as Whole Foods.”

This of course assumes there is a universally accepted definition of what constitutes natural — there isn’t — and that what we call natural — even if we have no idea what that means — is inherently better for you than what is not called natural.

It also assumes the Environmental Working Group is correct. But when industry is forced to defend itself against EWG’s claims, it probably should not take three guesses as to where objective news reporters will focus their attention.