On March 10, Bloomberg ran a story regarding a voluntary recall of La Roche-Posay Effaclar benzoyl peroxide acne treatment due to the presence of benzene, “L'Oréal Recalls Acne Treatment on Cancer-Linked Chemical,” sparking a blitz of scare headlines in publications like Fortune and Newsweek, creating a domino effect of fear and confusion on social media.Influencers on Instagram and TikTok spread the fear in posts rife with misinformation from headlines like The Daily Mail: “'Do not use' warning issued as popular face cream is urgently recalled due to contamination with cancer-causing chemical.”What you won’t read in the recent coverage is that L'Oréal recalled a single lot of Effaclar due to expire next month. Also, this was a retail recall, not a consumer recall, so no, Daily Mail, there was no “‘do not use’ warning” nor was the face cream “urgently recalled.”What actually happened is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) initiated independent testing on 95 acne products containing benzoyl peroxide in response to a Citizen’s Petition sent to the agency last March by Valisure, a Connecticut-based private lab that has drawn scrutiny from scientists and the media over the years for its questionable testing methods. In March of last year, Valisure announced it had found that benzoyl peroxide in popular acne treatments degrades to benzene, a carcinogen linked to blood cancers. The lab submitted a citizen petition asking the FDA to recall the products, in tandem with a media outreach.