We stand by our recommendation that the best way to avoid sun damage, the core goal of sunscreen, is to stay out of the sun, or to stay covered up while outside. This is the best method with the least impact on your surrounding ecosystem. If you plan to travel or live near coastal reefs and wear sunscreen, you may affect your environment less by using a physical sunscreen. (Note that a second study unearthed by our science editor, Leigh Krietsch Boerner, suggests that one of the active ingredients in many physical sunscreens, titanium dioxide, may also affect the ecosystem, but those correlations are less direct than the 2015 oxybenzone study and have not been replicated.)
So I’m not sure what your point is. Are you taking issue with the comment I made that the article had a good breakdown of the compounds in both types of sunscreen?
Just pointing out that they are casually dismissive of the dangers of the main chemical being banned.
We stand by our recommendation that the best way to avoid sun damage, the core goal of sunscreen, is to stay out of the sun, or to stay covered up while outside.
I spend all my time indoors correcting errors on the internet, but most of the 9 million people who travel here every year come for the outdoor activities.
I’m a ginger. There’s no such thing as a “tan”. There’s white, there’s red, and when the red goes away you’re back to white with maybe a few more freckles.
I lived in Oz for a decade and spent many a weekend diving off of the coast south of Sydney. On a trip to Kiola, my friend Ole was putting on some sunscreen prior to heading out in our club boat. He squirted a big glob into his hand and proceeded to apply it to the arm … which was rapidly covered in a thick white film. He scraped the excess off of his arm, glopped it into the other hand, and applied it to his other arm … which turned white. He scraped the excess off and applied it to his face and neck … which became similarly covered in white. He continued on his legs thinking that at some point that single initial dollop would run out. It didn’t. He ended up covered in a milky sheen. If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it. I watched the whole thing unfold and just laughed harder and harder as he vainly tried different limbs hoping that he could exhaust that bewitched paste.
This is all a good discussion. Note to self: here are the two chemicals to avoid when buying sunscreen: oxybenzone and octinoxate. The long sleeve rash guards that you’ll see me and my kids in are due to our not wanting to use sunscreen chemicals.
But is this a good time to b!tch about those spray-on sunscreens? Why is it that I’m always downwind of that mom spraying on a TON of that stuff all over her kids? (Just like I’m always downwind of the smokers.) Then as soon as she’s done spraying, and without rubbing it into their skin, the kids jump in the pool/ocean, and it all washes right off, then there’s that oily sheen on the water’s surface.
The spray-on sunscreens, no matter their ingredients, should also be banned.
Well, now, wait a minute - all that you just said is entirely true. But, I found out that if you spray it a on a Black Widow spider, it’s a pretty effective insecticide in a pinch!
