- August 7, 2007
- Sunburn & Suntan Lotion
How to Get a Great (and Safe) Tan at the Beach
It's vacation time, and you need the perfect tan. Yes, the sun's natural rays can be harmful, but a few steps and precautions will make going to the beach fun again.
Bikini and Sun Lovers Beware
It is becoming more and more important that all sun lovers take precautions to avoid excessive exposure to the sun's harmful rays. Following are some tips to make your sun worshipping both enjoyable and safer.
Katie Couric's Notebook: Sunscreens
The lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer call for good protection against the sun. But as Katie Couric explains, sunscreens available here in the U.S. are inferior to those sold overseas.
A sunburn is a burn to living tissue such as skin produced by overexposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation, commonly from the sun's rays. Usual mild symptoms in humans and animals are red or reddish skin that is hot to the touch, general fatigue, and mild dizziness. An excess of UV-radiation can be life-threatening in extreme cases. Exposure of the skin to lesser amounts of UV radiation will often produce a suntan.
Excessive UV-radiation is the leading cause of skin cancer. Sunscreen is widely agreed to prevent sunburn, although a minority of scientists argue that it may not effectively protect against malignant melanoma, which is caused by a different part of the ultraviolet spectrum. Clothing, including hats, is considered the preferred skin protection method. Moderate sun tanning without burning can also prevent subsequent sunburn, as it increases the amount of melanin, a skin photoprotectant pigment that is the skin's natural defense against overexposure. Importantly, sunburn and the increase in melanin production are both triggered by direct DNA damage. When the skin cells' DNA is damaged by UV radiation, type I cell-death is triggered and the skin is replaced. Malignant melanoma may occur as a result of indirect DNA damage if the damage is not properly repaired. Proper repair occurs in the majority of DNA damage, and as a result not every exposure to UV results in cancer. The only cure for sunburn is slow healing, although some skin creams can help with the symptoms.
Sunscreen (also known as sunblock or suntan lotion) is a lotion, spray, gel or other topical product that absorbs or reflects the sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation and protects the skin.
Sunscreens contain one or more UV filters of which there are three main types:
- Organic chemical compounds that absorb ultraviolet light (such as oxybenzone)
- Inorganic particulates that reflect, scatter, and absorb UV light (such as titanium dioxide, zinc oxide), or a combination of both.
- Organic particulates that mostly absorb light like organic chemical compounds, but contain multiple chromophores, may reflect and scatter a fraction of light like inorganic particulates, and behave differently in formulations than organic chemical compounds. An example is Tinosorb M.
Medical organizations such as the American Cancer Society recommend the use of sunscreen because it prevents the squamous cell carcinoma and the basal cell carcinoma. However, several epidemiological studies indicate an increased risk of malignant melanoma for the sunscreen user. Despite these studies, no medical association has published recommendations to not use sunblock. Different meta-analysis publications have concluded that the evidence is not yet sufficient to claim a positive correlation between sunscreen use and malignant melanoma.