Recently I headed out to the local splash park with five kids! I thought I was doing a really fun thing for all the kids (only two of which are mine) by taking them out for a day of fun, sun, & splash.
I had carefully packed lunches, filled water, and picked up sand toys. All kids were ready! When we got there I organized everything (not cause I am super women, but with five kids you have no choice but to be organized) I applied sunscreen and the kids were ready!
All day we played, ate, and enjoyed the sun. I kept a close eye on the fair skin kids. You see mine a dark olive skinned and I can apply sunscreen once and forget about it. I have never had the unfortunate affects of sunburn on my kids. I was nervous about making sure the blondies in my brood didn’t get pink.
So you can imagine my surprise when my little toe head day care girl showed up today with a burn on her back from the sun. OMG I felt so bad, but how did this happen. I applied three or four times and kept giving them the finger poke check (I hated that when I was little)! I thought I had executed the perfect summer outing. But I was wrong!
I was baffled as to how this could have happened and it bugged me all day. So I went looking for answers.
Come to find out there are many rules to sunscreen that I was unaware of! Such as, you should get a new bottle every year. Since my boys and I apply once and forget it, we never go through an entire bottle and I have had mine for two years. Apparently, the active ingredients expire and break down over time. Therefore, the cream I applied to my fair-skinned charges was pretty much useless. Thank God their burns were not worse and they did have some protection from the lotion it’s self so that helped.
There were plenty of other things I found out too here are some eye openers from www.the skincancerfoundation.org
Excerpt from The Skin Cancer Foundation:
The sunscreen aisle of a drugstore offers lots of choices, but which one is right for you? We show you how to find the sunscreen that best fits your lifestyle.
What Are Sunscreens?
Sunscreens are chemical agents that help prevent the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) radiation from reaching the skin. Two types of ultraviolet radiation, UVA and UVB, damage the skin and increase your risk of skin cancer.
UVB is the chief culprit behind sunburn, while UVA rays, which penetrate the skin more deeply, are associated with wrinkling, leathering, sagging, and other effects of photoaging. They also exacerbate the carcinogenic effects of UVB rays, and increasingly are being seen as a cause of skin cancer on their own. Sunscreens vary in their ability to protect against UVA and UVB.
What Is SPF?
Most sunscreens with an SPF of 15 or higher do an excellent job of protecting against UVB. SPF—or Sun Protection Factor—is a measure of a sunscreen’s ability to prevent UVB from damaging the skin. Here’s how it works: If it takes twenty minutes for your unprotected skin to start turning red, using an SPF 15 sunscreen theoretically prevents reddening fifteen times longer—about five hours.
Another way to look at it is in terms of percentages: SPF 15 blocks approximately 93 percent of all incoming UVB rays. SPF 30 blocks 97 percent; and SPF 50 blocks 98 percent. They may seem like negligible differences, but if you are light-sensitive, or have a history of skin cancer, those extra percentages will make a difference. And as you can see, no sunscreen can block all UV rays.
But there are problems with the SPF model: First, no sunscreen, regardless of strength, should be expected to stay effective longer than two hours without reapplication. Second, “reddening” of the skin is a reaction to UVB rays alone and tells you little about what UVA damage you may be getting. Plenty of damage can be done without the red flag of sunburn being raised.
