September 4, 2024 • 34 mins
From the reason Australians love to "slip, slop, slap," to a pretty good reason to smear salad dressing on your body, Will and Mango explore the biggest questions in sunscreen, starting with, does it actually work.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Guess what, Well, what's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
So the US Open starts this week and I was
thinking about that old Seinfeld, the one where they're at
the match talking about sunscreen.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I think maybe I'm gonna need you to be a
little bit more specific. I was a fan of the show,
but I'm not remembering here.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Let me just play this clip.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
For you, the ways the sunblock. Yeah, it says Papa
in it.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I need Papa free.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
You got a problem with Papa? Yes, I have a
problem with Papa. You don't even know what Paba is.
No enough to stay away from. Ah classic Seinfeld dialogue.
It's like nothing happens and nothing matters.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
It is beautiful. But I kept thinking about the scene
this summer because I've been getting back into playing tennis. Actually,
my friend Joanna keeps making fun of me and calling
me a little tennis prince because I keep talking about it.
But as you probably know, I hate wearing sunscreen. I
do not like the way it feels. I don't like
that it doesn't quite rub into my skin, and it
(01:08):
makes me look white or purple when I try to
rub it in, but when you're spending hours outside, obviously
you don't want to burn or get skin damage. And
it's hard to figure out which sunscreens are actually good.
So I thought maybe we could look into it a little.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
And I'm curious if you ever figured out what Papa is.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Papa. There's some problems with Papa. I'll explain it in
a minute.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
friend mangesh Ho Ticketer and sitting there behind that big
glass booth. Actually it's sort of hard to see him
because there's a lot of white smudged all over there,
and wearing armlength UV gloves, giant Hollywood sunglasses, and the
top it off, he's got an umbrella hat. I didn't
(02:13):
even know he owned one of those, which I think
is a Japanese contraption he ordered online. If I'm not mistaken,
that is our good friend Dylan.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
So I guess Dylan is really trying to protect his
skin and avoiding any sun today, which is on theme,
and I guess makes sense, except that we're all sitting indoors.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
You can never be too careful there, all right, So
let's get back to sunscreen. We are old enough that
when we were kids, you just run around the neighborhood
without really thinking too much about sun protection, especially when
it wasn't that hot out. But over time, everyone's just
gotten used to putting it on all the time. I
don't know if you're this way with your kids, but
my kids hardly ever go outside without sunscreen on.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
No, it's the same over here. And it's one of
those things like wine or chocolate, where every time you
read an article about sunscreen, it's either like sunscreen is
going to save you from cancer or sunscreen is giving
you cancer, and it is hard to parse out. So
I thought it'd be good to look at some of
the stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Yeah, and I know we want to talk about Papa
and sunscreens and what some of the terminology means, But
why don't we start from the very beginning with a
bit of a primer on where sunscreen actually comes from.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, that's a good idea. So originally sunscreens and sun
protection wasn't done so much out of a life saving necessity,
but more out of this sort of cosmetic concern and
the ancient Egyptians used various methods of sun protection because
lighter skin was more desirable culturally, which obviously has been
a thing all over the world. In India, they used
(03:42):
to make this awful skin bleaching thing called fair and
Lovely to make you look more light skinned. But in
ancient Egypt they use stuff like rice brand, jasmine, and
lupine to block the tanning effects of the sun on
the skin.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
And did any of that stuff actually work?
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah? So, actually rice brand absorbs UV light and jasmine
helps repair DNA, and lupine's the thing that lightens the skin.
So if your goal was to look like an indoor
kid or a vampire, it wasn't a bad combo. But
that wasn't the only way that early people protected their
skin from the sun. The Greeks pioneered the idea of
slathering olive oil on your skin to protect it. It
(04:21):
turns out that olive oil has an SPF of around eight.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
I would have thought the exact opposite, because you always
know those kids when we were younger that would like
put the oil on themselves to try to get a
better tan or a burn in many cases. But that's
good to know, so I guess if you're out of
sun's green, maybe just pivot to salad dressing.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah, I mean everyone of the beach loves the guy
who smells like hot garlics, so totally. Some protection continues
to be about racism basically well into the sixteen hundreds,
and you have things like women in Europe using velvet
face bizards to protect themselves. And it isn't until eight
ninety six that really there's this first idea of sun
(05:04):
exposure and skin cancer being linked that comes from a
German physician named Paul Anna, and he termed these pre
cancerous changes sailor's skin carcinoma or in German seema's shout
a carzinome.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Oh yeah, semen showers are causernome. Yeah, sc scary stuff.
So how did he come up with something to protect
against semen's shouder carcinome?
Speaker 1 (05:28):
So he did make something to help, but it wasn't
very popular. It was made of horse chestnut and it
was super thick and awkward on the skin. But basically
two guys do emerge in the twentieth century as the
godfathers of what we would recognize today as sunscreen. So
the first is in nineteen forty four Benjamin Green. He's
an airman and pharmacist. He used a greasy substance called
(05:51):
red vet pet red veterinary petroleum to protect himself and
other soldiers from ultraviolet rays during World War Two, and
after the war he mixes this with cocoa butter and
coconut oil into this product that would eventually become Coppertone
Suntan Cream. And the second person is a Swiss chemistry
student named Franz Greider. This is in nineteen thirty eight.
(06:14):
He got a sunburn while climbing this mountain, Mount Pisbooon,
so he invented a product called Glacier Cream and it's
under the brand Pisboon. In the nineteen seventies he introduces
sunscreens with ultraviolet A and ultraviolet B filters.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
You know, actually, I was looking up a little of
the history of Coppertone, which is of course famous for
that old logo with the toddler and the dog pulling
at the underwear, and I guess the idea was to
show a tan line there. And what's weird is that
the original tagline for that campaign was don't be.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
A pale face, isn't uh isn't it the girl's bum
that's exposed? Like why did they use that tagline?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I was curious about the exact same thing, and I
guess Coppertne was mainly about preventing but also allowing you
to tan. And before they had that Baby on the
Beach campaign, copper Tone's logo was of a Native American
chief basically encouraging everyone to get tan. They later changed
it to tan, Don't burn and for the fastest tan,
(07:16):
things like that, both of which are a little more PC.
But you know, obviously we're going to get into sunscreens
in just a bit. But as you were talking about
the ancient Egyptians who were lotioning up with rice brand
and jasmine, it did get me thinking about the Dylan
like approaches that some other civilizations used to protect themselves
from the sun.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Like umbrella hats.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Well more umbrellas and hats, not really that brilliant combination
that was eventually brought together. But one thing I found
interesting was that parasols were symbols of status and power
throughout Asia and Africa. And again this does get into
racist notions where fair skin sort of signified higher birth,
but ceremonial parasols which were carried by tendants. They actually
(08:01):
helped preserve the pale complexions of the elite, which reinforced
their entitlement to rule, so sun protection was actually subject
to law, like for example, in Assyria, only the king
himself could use a parasol. Now by this sixteen hundred's
personal sun shades had filtered down to a few more
of the classes, and parasols were customary and Mediterranean Europe,
(08:23):
mostly among women, where sunburn or freckled skin was generally
avoided at all costs by polite society, and gentil ladies
went to great links to preserve the pale complexion expected
of their rank and their sex.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
I know, you think about all the toxic powders that
women of the court used to wear in Victorian times
to make themselves whiter, or like Japanese women would wear,
and it had mercury in it. I think the Victorian
women had arsenic in it, and it was all to
show people they were of such high class that they
never had to work in the sun or be exposed
(08:56):
as sun. But you wonder how did we go from
those extremes to like tans being a sign of status.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
It really started in the nineteen twenties when socialites started
frequenting glamorous beaches of California and the French Riviera, and
it became fashionable to acquire a sun tan. And there's
a lot of chatter about how Coco Chanel kind of
launched a movement and used tan mannequins, but actually it
predates her.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Oh that's interesting. So now that we've talked a little
bit about the history of sunscreens and went a little
off track with parasols, let's get back to original question.
Do sunscreens actually do anything? All?
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Right? Well, why don't we start with that Seinfeld clip
U teased at the beginning of the show. So what
is papa.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Papa is an organic compound that can absorb UVB rays
and those are the UV rays that caused sunburns. So
it was a really popular ingredient in sunscreens starting in
the nineteen forties. PAPA stands for para amino benzoic acid,
but unfortu actunately, it caused allergic reactions in a significant
(10:03):
part of the population. So PAPA is no longer approved
by the FDA for use in sunscreens.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
And I'm guessing it gets banned in the nineties, like
around the time of that clip from Seinfeld.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
So weirdly, the FDA only put PABA on its list
of unsafe for ineffective compounds in twenty nineteen. So even
though George Costanza warned us about PAPA way back in
nineteen ninety three, the FDA does tend to move a
little bit slowly on these things.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yeah, I mean to be fair, George Costanza also lied
about being a marine biologist and tried to get the
Yankees to wear cotton uniform so he's not exactly a
trusted source. But how exactly is the FDA defining sunscreens
and making some of these decisions?
Speaker 1 (10:47):
So I came prepared for this question. Sunscreen refers to
a product in the US which is typically a lotion, cream, gel,
or spray that blocks harmful UV rays from damaging your skin,
and it also includes filters, which are the active ingredients
in sunscreen. A sunscreen product is a mix of various moisturizers, fragrances, preservatives,
(11:10):
and of course the filters. But these filters can vary,
and in fact, I'm sure you've heard some of your
fancier friends talk about how European and Asian sunscreens are
far superior.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, I mean people always say you got to go
far away to find the best stuff. You think about
Belgian chocolates, Japanese kit cats, I mean, I know you
think about Japanese kit cats, Korean face mask and fried chicken,
and pop music like the list goes on.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
I mean, the K pop thing is crazy to me.
Like the last time I was in India, kids knew
more about kpop than they did about American bands for
the first time, and that was something that never happened
in my lifetime. But back to foreign sunscreens, So the
sunscreen abroad works better because the filters are actually better.
There are all kinds of UV filters that have been
approved for decades in Europe and Asia, but aren't approved
(11:58):
in the US because in most of the world, sunscreen
is actually classified as a cosmetic but in the US
that isn't the case.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
And why is that.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Back in nineteen thirty eight, the Federal Food, Drug and
Cosmetic Act was passed and it required sunscreens to be
classified as both a cosmetic and a drug and drugs
have to be tested on animals.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Wait, we had a law that required us to test
sunscreen on animals.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yeah, I mean the intentions were good. And remember this
is from nineteen thirty eight when the Act was really
a huge advance in US food policy, and it took
a lot of effort, Like the US largely through the
efforts of women's groups, pioneered policies that were designed to
protect the pocketbooks of consumers, and all these standards were
implemented for safety and ensuring value. But sunscreen fell into
(12:48):
this weird gray area because of the question of is
sunscreen a drug or cosmetic? And the thing is it's
pretty hard to answer. Like the way the fd and
C ACT defined cosmetics is quo as articles intended to
be rubbed, poured, sprinkled, or sprayed on, introduced into, or
otherwise applied to the human body for cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness,
(13:12):
or altering the appearance.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Okay, I mean, with the exception of sprinkling, I don't
think I've ever sprinkled sunscreen, But that does sound like
what sunscreen is.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Yeah. And the way the FDNC defines drugs is articles
intended for use in the mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
That that also sounds what sunscreen is.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, so you see the problem, and it isn't just sunscreen.
So like a lot of products fall into this both
category if you think about it, like anti dandrift shampoo
is a cosmetic because you know it's used to clean
the hair, and it's also a drug because it's intended
to treat dan drift. Toothpaste claims to freshen your breath
and cleanse the teeth, but it also contains fluoride. Like,
(13:52):
these products all have to meet the standards of both
cosmetics and drugs.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
So to get back to the animal thing, it still
sounds like one of those standards for drugs in the
US is testing it on animals.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah, And to be clear, there was a new law
passed last year that says drugs no longer have to
be tested on animals. President Biden signed a law that
you can use organ chips and computer modeling and other
types of electronics in place of animal testing. But according
to the journal Science, it'll take a while for the
industry to adapt to these methods and it's unclear how
(14:25):
much it'll actually change things because, as one scientist in
the article put it, quote, we can drop a new
candidate drug onto a bunch of liver cells, and we
can see that it doesn't damage them, But what we
don't know is whether it's going to make a person cough,
whether it's going to damage their own testines or their brain.
So it's a really deeply complicated issue, and drugs obviously
(14:47):
deserve to be tested deeply, but the European Union has
long banned any animal testing of cosmetics, which is how
they define sunscreen, and because the regulations are more lax
in places like France, they can actually innovate and test
much more quickly.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
All right, let's talk a little bit about the specifics
you see on a sunscreen, Like what type of sunscreen
are you using?
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I try to go for every single benefit. It' says,
so like a fifty plus SPF broad spectrum waterproof REEF
safe sunscreen.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
You just said so much, nothing like you know, you
don't even know. I don't think I know.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
I just like words and I trust advertising. But I
feel like if I if I slap some of this
on my face and go play a tennis, I've covered right.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, I mean, the first thing you should know is
that there's no such thing as an all day, waterproof,
sweat proof sunscreen. So if that's what you're hoping for,
it actually doesn't exist, Mango.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
I mean, I'm not playing that long because I'm out
of ship, so all day isn't really interesting for me.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
That's fair. But regardless, if you're out there for more
than a few sets, you just have to reapply sunscreen
like the rest of us, after you sweat or swim
or just after a of hours.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
And what about this reef safe business, Like, I don't
want to hurt the reefs, and you know how much
I love reefs.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
You love the reefs. I mean, there's no standard or
regulated meaning behind reef, say for reef friendly. This is
something that comes up in a lot of places like
Hawaii or Australia, where they obviously want to protect the
coral and so some of the sunscreens that are labeled
as reef save for sunscreens that aren't using things like
oxybenzone or octanoxate too filters that might be harmful to
(16:30):
coral reefs. But some of these reef safe products use
minerals like titanium dioxide, which can produce hydrogen peroxide in
the water, a chemical that's actually harmful to marine organisms.
So again it's it's pretty murky when you look at
something like that. But the reefs are under a much
greater threat from climate change than from sun's grain, to
(16:50):
be sure.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
And what about the SPF label on my ies on screen?
Speaker 2 (16:55):
So SPF stands for sun protection factor, and it's a
measure of how well sunscreen protects the skin from UVB rays,
not UVA. So quick Google search tells you that SPF
compares how long it would take for the sun's UV
rays to red and skin without sunscreen to how long
it would take with sunscreen. And if it takes twenty
(17:16):
minutes for unprotected skin to turn red, SPF thirty. Sunscreen
prevents reddening for thirty times longer. But again, some of
this is a little bit murky, Like there's this book
called sun Tanning in the twentieth Century, and in it
it talks about how spfs are really useful for manufacturers
because fear is a powerful selling tool. Like in nineteen
(17:39):
eighty two, this Forbes piece showed that sixty five percent
of all sunscreen sold had an SPF value of only
SPF two to SPF eight. But by nineteen ninety two,
when things like ozone holes and skin cancer were in
the public conversation, and sunscreen started to have this halo quality.
As this per detective goop, most sunscreens started being SPF
(18:03):
fifteen or higher, which is obviously better for protection, but
part of the reason for the change was that companies
could charge more. Like at the time, companies could charge
four ninety nine or so for a bottle of SPF four,
almost seven dollars for SPF eight and seven ninety nine
for SPF fifteen, But the numbers didn't exactly match up,
(18:25):
like SPF fifty supposedly only gave six percent more protection
than SPF fifteen, So again it's all a little confusing.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
So what SPF should I be using? Then?
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Yeah, there's this whole debate about this, and we'll get
into what Australia is recommending in a bit as a
nation with some of the most skin cancer. But the
American Academy of Dermatology recommends SPF thirty or higher, with
an emphasis on higher, like most recommend anything from SPF
fifty to seventy.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Great, so I feel like at least I'm covered on
that front. And what about the bit that says broad spectrum.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah, broad spectrum is a real term, but it means
a lot of different things. So in the US, broad
spectrum refers only to protection against UVA light. In Europe,
broad spectrum also refers to the quality of UVB shielding.
So brands earn the right to use that term broad
spectrum if laboratory measurements of UVA protection are at least
(19:24):
a third the values of laboratory measurements of UVB protection.
You got this right. This is all super clear.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
So remind me what's the difference between VA and UVV, Like,
which one's the bad one.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Well, they can actually both be harmful. So UVB radiation
makes up about five percent of the sun's UV light.
It causes sunburns, damages the top layers of the skin,
can cause DNA mutations that lead to skin cancer. And
UVA radiation makes up about ninety five percent of the
sun's UV light, and these rays penetrate deep into the skin.
(20:00):
They go past the epidermis, which is that outermost layer
of course, and into the dermis, which is that middle layer.
They can even pass through glass, which is why you
can get a sunburn while driving or sitting by a window.
So these are the rays that caused sun tans. They
cause wrinkles, sunspots, collagen damage, and those signs of aging.
(20:21):
But what many people don't realize is that UVA rays
can also cause cancer. I mean, all of.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
This is so scary. So if you buy a bottle
of sunscreen in the US and it says broad spectrum,
it means it might not protect against UVB light at all.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
I mean not only that, but according to a twenty
ten Environmental Working Group analysis of four hundred and forty
six beach and sports sunscreens, all of which had SPF
ratings of thirty plus, nearly two thirds of them provided
inadequate UVA protection, and a product survey by Procter and
Gamble in two thousand and four noted that a third
(20:58):
of products that claimed spectrum protection on the label didn't
actually provide it. The most common UVA filter in the
US is avibin zone, which was the last big filter
approved in the US in the nineteen nineties. But among
the UVA filters approved in Europe, the good ones we
can't get, like three of them, tenosorb S, tenosorb M,
(21:21):
and mexiil SX are between four and five times more
protective than avibenzone.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
So I get that Europe and Asia have all these
advanced sunscreens because of our I guess, rigorous testing process.
But how do we know if these foreign filters are
actually safe?
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Well, people in Europe and Asia have been using these
newer chemical filters for years, decades in some cases, so
industry advocates argue that there is plenty of data to
support their safety. No one seems to be experiencing any
widespread health problems related to these sunscreens.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I mean, I guess when you've got populations of two
continents and you've got about a decade of experience, it
sounds like good data.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yeah, I mean, but the FBA is still dragging its feet.
And on top of that, sunscreen manufacturers are reluctant to
attempt the approval process because you know, the return on
investment on sunscreen is low. Most of the UV filters
in question aren't eligible for patent protection.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
That's where they're not actually covered by patents.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, and because the profit margin on suns green is
nowhere near what it is on pharmaceuticals. The battery of
tests the FDA asks for takes years and cost a
lot of money. Companies really aren't that incentivized to enter
the US market. For instance, the top chemical maker DSM
recently started advancing a filter known as tensorb S through
(22:41):
the FDA approval process. It would be the first new
UV filter to hit the US market since Abben Zone
in the nineteen nineties. But the final bill for this
process will come to between twelve million and twenty million dollars.
Seven other organic V filters, all of which are in
regular use and the rest of the world, are stuck
(23:01):
in the FDA approval pipeline, even though Congress has repeatedly
tried to force the agency to move faster.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
I mean, it's kind of fine to see that these
things are actually bipartisan, Like Rand Paul was the one
pushing away from animal testing to get meaningful drugs tested
quicker and out to market faster, particularly during the COVID era.
And then AOC was using TikTok to get people to
press Congress for changes to sunscreen regulation. And I know
(23:28):
she got some criticism because people were saying that she
was making all this ruckus about a beauty product, but
sunscreen obviously impacts a massive number of people's health.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yeah, of course. And it's particularly weird because while the
FDA is dragging its feet to approve new filters. They're
worried about some of the existing filters, where an FDA
terms sunscreens that are not grace GRASEE, which is an
acronym for generally recognized as safe and effective. So agencies
(24:00):
has recently published a studies showing that under normal usage conditions,
most commonly used organic UV filters show up in the
bloodstream at levels that trigger a toxicology study requirement.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
That sounds terrifying.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Super scary, But I mean the thing is, that's as
far as the FDA will go with their internal research.
Like the agency says it's up to the industry to
generate the rest of the data.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
So they're basically saying, there's enough of this stuff going
to your body that you should check if it's toxic,
but we're not going to pay for that research.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
That's that's pretty much sums it up.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Oh my god, that is a terrible place to leave consumers,
especially when you look at the stats right like skin
cancer rates are so high in the US right now,
one in five Americans will develop skin cancer by the
age of seventy. This year, the American Cancer Society reported
that about three point three million Americans were diagnosed with
skin cancer, and each year that number is increasing.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yeah, but this misinformation about Quote Kim sunscreens was so
bad that the FDA had to issue its own caveat.
Like the statement they put out says, while research indicates
that some topical drugs can be absorbed into the body
through the skin, this does not mean these drugs are unsafe,
but this finding does call for further testing to determine
(25:19):
the safety of repeated use.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
It's such a messy statement after making a mess of
it to begin with. But one thing I think is
weird is that it almost feels like the attitude towards
sunscreen and sun protection is that they're luxury products. And
this is what I was getting to with the AOC
stuff that you know, it feels like these are only
things that you need if you're spending time on a yacht.
(25:43):
But of course that's not true. And when you think
about people who regularly work in the sun, like farm
workers and people who do manual labor outdoors, whether that's
construction or landscaping or whatever, it really affects everyone. So
I'd love to hear, like, what is some practical advice here?
How do we stay safe.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Well, Dylan actually has the right idea as always. I
mean when does Dylan not have the right idea. So
staying out of the sun is key, and you can
do it with hats and clothes that now have SPF
ratings and of course parasols. And so we already talked
about using sunscreens that have an SPF of thirty or higher,
and a lot of dermatologists advocate to sticking to fifty
(26:22):
or higher. But SPF doesn't matter if you're not applying
the sunscreen correctly. So an adult body in a bathing
suit typically needs at least one liquid ounce or what
fills your palm applied every two hours or after you
swim or sweat a lot, and make sure it is
not expired.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Yeah, I always forget that a sunscreen can actually expire.
And what if I've already built up my base tan.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Well, I think you have a natural based tand because
of your skin color. But for those who think a
base tan from the sun or a tanning bed will
protect your body from the sun, a quote base tan
is actually sun damage. It's your body producing melanin to
try to protect itself from more UV rays penetrating deeper
into your skin. Besides, a base tan only provides an
(27:11):
SPF of around say five.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Which is less than olive oil.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
At eight, it is exactly less than olive oil. You're right,
and you're better off slathering yourself in delicious olive oil
for sun protection than trying to build a base tan,
if you want to put it that way.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Well, I'm waiting for the FDA to approve an olive
oil sunscreen, but you know, gives me safe sun protection
but also tastes great. Drizzled over sliced tomatoes.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Love olive oil so much it's weird. I didn't expect
to be hungry talking about US sunscreen. Well, one other
thing to think about is that there's still a lot
of debate on all of this. The standards we're talking
about are really American notions. But there's an article in
the Atlantic by Rowan Jacobsen who talks about how Australia
has really changed on this issue. Australia has by far
(27:58):
the world's highest skin care answer rate. So in the
nineteen eighties they launched this campaign of quote slip slop
slap and it was basically as big as our just
Say No campaign in the US, and the idea was
to promote protection from the sun. Slip on a shirt,
slop on some sunscreen, and slap on a hat. It's
(28:19):
just so much fun to say, slip, slap, slap. Yeah. Yeah,
but keeping people out of the sun wasn't the answer,
because sunlight has all these benefits that a vitamin D
pill doesn't give you, including protecting from things like MS
and diabetes. Anyway, recently the country has revised their sun
protection advice according to skin color and susceptibility to skin cancer. So,
(28:42):
according to this same piece, for those with pale skin
or olive skin plus other risk factors, practice extreme caution,
keep slip slop slapping.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
For those with.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Olive oil or pale brown skin, take a balanced approach,
using sun screen whenever the UV index is at least
a three, which is most days of the year in Australia. Actually,
and for those with dark skin, you really only need
sunscreen for extended outings in the bright sun. So it's
a more complicated approach, but it's one of the country's
health officials actually stand by.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
I guess that makes sense that it doesn't have to
be this one size fits all approach. Yeah, and this
whole thing is so wordy and so mush to think about.
But you know, one thing we don't have to think
a lot about is whether or not to end this
on a fact off.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Let's do it, all right, So here's one to kick
us off. Kristin Little has the Guinness record for most
spray tans in one hour. That's not a record I
would have thought about where she got one hundred and
seven spray tans. Apparently she wasn't just doing it for
(29:55):
the glow up. Kristin is in the spray tanning business
and did this stunt to raise awareness for skin cancer
and also to fundraise for a local cancer center.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
I feel like that's a very different type of dunking
booth than most of the year. So, speaking of fake tan's,
we've all heard about how Richard Nixon lost the election
to Kennedy because of how pale and sweaty he looked
on TV during those debates. But one thing I'd never
heard before was that JFK's ten wasn't natural. According to
(30:26):
David Halberstam's reporting, JFK's appearance was the result of his
experimenting with Man ten, the first self tanning lotion.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
I would have no idea that that existed at the
time of JFK being around. That's wild. Well, did you
know that even when you're dead, your body can keep tanning?
According to a twenty twenty three paper in the American
Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, quote, post mortem tanning
is very much a thing. The paper actually describes and
(30:57):
analyzes three bodies from different climates had been left in
the sun and showed tan lines from the exposure after death.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
That is so weird and so morbid, But I guess
it's good to know. Like, if you have a dead relative,
you can send them to a tanning booth before a funeral.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Yeah, oh, good call.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
So here's a weird one from that GEO. To protect
itself from the sun, the West African lungfish goes into estivation,
or a summer version of hibernation, where it bundles itself
in a cocoon of mucus and then digs itself into
the mud.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
That's one way for us to handle it next time
we go to the beach. All right, Well, according to Vox,
higher spfs will give you more protection. In a study
published in twenty seventeen, two hundred people in Vail, Colorado,
applied SPF fifty Son's Green to one side of their
face and SPF one hundred to the other. I sort
(31:53):
of love this study, And so the next day, forty
one percent of them were sunburned on their SPF fifty
side compared to fourteen percent on their SPF one hundred side.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
I love that pretty great. So I think it's pretty
easy for us all to take the sun for granted,
especially in the summertime. But there's a group of kids,
the so called children of the Night, who no amount
of sunscreen can help because they're allergic to the sun.
And Atlas Obscura writes about them and describes the phenomena.
It's called zeroderma pigmentosum. And this phenomena actually makes summer
(32:31):
camp or any daytime activity painful and even fatally dangerous.
But luckily, since nineteen ninety five, there's a place called
Camps Sundown in Prairieville, New York, and it's been catering
to these kids and it really lets them reclaim the summer.
They get to do night swims, flashlight tag late night movies,
and campfires, which all takes place under the glow of
(32:54):
the moonlight.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
That is so sweet. It's such a great idea you
have and did it with the sweetest facts. So I
think I'm gonna have to give you this week's trophy, Mango.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Thank you so much, and I'm gonna grab it from
your slippery sunscreeny hands before we head out. Please remember
we love hearing from you, but more importantly, our moms
love hearing from you, and you can always hit us
up with questions and comments at our mom's email address,
keyty Genius Moms at gmail dot com. And that is
(33:26):
it for this week's episode from Will, Dylan, Mary, and myself.
Thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is
a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted
(33:50):
by Will Pearson and me Mongagetikler and research by our
good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and
produced by the one Wonderful of Dylan Fagan with support
from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart
by Katrina Norvel and Ali Perry, with social media support
from Sasha Gay trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey. For
(34:13):
more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Guess what, Well, what's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
So the US Open starts this week and I was
thinking about that old Seinfeld, the one where they're at
the match talking about sunscreen.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I think maybe I'm gonna need you to be a
little bit more specific. I was a fan of the show,
but I'm not remembering here.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Let me just play this clip.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
For you, the ways the sunblock. Yeah, it says Papa
in it.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I need Papa free.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
You got a problem with Papa? Yes, I have a
problem with Papa. You don't even know what Paba is.
No enough to stay away from. Ah classic Seinfeld dialogue.
It's like nothing happens and nothing matters.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
It is beautiful. But I kept thinking about the scene
this summer because I've been getting back into playing tennis. Actually,
my friend Joanna keeps making fun of me and calling
me a little tennis prince because I keep talking about it.
But as you probably know, I hate wearing sunscreen. I
do not like the way it feels. I don't like
that it doesn't quite rub into my skin, and it
(01:08):
makes me look white or purple when I try to
rub it in, but when you're spending hours outside, obviously
you don't want to burn or get skin damage. And
it's hard to figure out which sunscreens are actually good.
So I thought maybe we could look into it a little.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
And I'm curious if you ever figured out what Papa is.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Papa. There's some problems with Papa. I'll explain it in
a minute.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
friend mangesh Ho Ticketer and sitting there behind that big
glass booth. Actually it's sort of hard to see him
because there's a lot of white smudged all over there,
and wearing armlength UV gloves, giant Hollywood sunglasses, and the
top it off, he's got an umbrella hat. I didn't
(02:13):
even know he owned one of those, which I think
is a Japanese contraption he ordered online. If I'm not mistaken,
that is our good friend Dylan.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
So I guess Dylan is really trying to protect his
skin and avoiding any sun today, which is on theme,
and I guess makes sense, except that we're all sitting indoors.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
You can never be too careful there, all right, So
let's get back to sunscreen. We are old enough that
when we were kids, you just run around the neighborhood
without really thinking too much about sun protection, especially when
it wasn't that hot out. But over time, everyone's just
gotten used to putting it on all the time. I
don't know if you're this way with your kids, but
my kids hardly ever go outside without sunscreen on.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
No, it's the same over here. And it's one of
those things like wine or chocolate, where every time you
read an article about sunscreen, it's either like sunscreen is
going to save you from cancer or sunscreen is giving
you cancer, and it is hard to parse out. So
I thought it'd be good to look at some of
the stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Yeah, and I know we want to talk about Papa
and sunscreens and what some of the terminology means, But
why don't we start from the very beginning with a
bit of a primer on where sunscreen actually comes from.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, that's a good idea. So originally sunscreens and sun
protection wasn't done so much out of a life saving necessity,
but more out of this sort of cosmetic concern and
the ancient Egyptians used various methods of sun protection because
lighter skin was more desirable culturally, which obviously has been
a thing all over the world. In India, they used
(03:42):
to make this awful skin bleaching thing called fair and
Lovely to make you look more light skinned. But in
ancient Egypt they use stuff like rice brand, jasmine, and
lupine to block the tanning effects of the sun on
the skin.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
And did any of that stuff actually work?
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah? So, actually rice brand absorbs UV light and jasmine
helps repair DNA, and lupine's the thing that lightens the skin.
So if your goal was to look like an indoor
kid or a vampire, it wasn't a bad combo. But
that wasn't the only way that early people protected their
skin from the sun. The Greeks pioneered the idea of
slathering olive oil on your skin to protect it. It
(04:21):
turns out that olive oil has an SPF of around eight.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
I would have thought the exact opposite, because you always
know those kids when we were younger that would like
put the oil on themselves to try to get a
better tan or a burn in many cases. But that's
good to know, so I guess if you're out of
sun's green, maybe just pivot to salad dressing.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah, I mean everyone of the beach loves the guy
who smells like hot garlics, so totally. Some protection continues
to be about racism basically well into the sixteen hundreds,
and you have things like women in Europe using velvet
face bizards to protect themselves. And it isn't until eight
ninety six that really there's this first idea of sun
(05:04):
exposure and skin cancer being linked that comes from a
German physician named Paul Anna, and he termed these pre
cancerous changes sailor's skin carcinoma or in German seema's shout
a carzinome.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Oh yeah, semen showers are causernome. Yeah, sc scary stuff.
So how did he come up with something to protect
against semen's shouder carcinome?
Speaker 1 (05:28):
So he did make something to help, but it wasn't
very popular. It was made of horse chestnut and it
was super thick and awkward on the skin. But basically
two guys do emerge in the twentieth century as the
godfathers of what we would recognize today as sunscreen. So
the first is in nineteen forty four Benjamin Green. He's
an airman and pharmacist. He used a greasy substance called
(05:51):
red vet pet red veterinary petroleum to protect himself and
other soldiers from ultraviolet rays during World War Two, and
after the war he mixes this with cocoa butter and
coconut oil into this product that would eventually become Coppertone
Suntan Cream. And the second person is a Swiss chemistry
student named Franz Greider. This is in nineteen thirty eight.
(06:14):
He got a sunburn while climbing this mountain, Mount Pisbooon,
so he invented a product called Glacier Cream and it's
under the brand Pisboon. In the nineteen seventies he introduces
sunscreens with ultraviolet A and ultraviolet B filters.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
You know, actually, I was looking up a little of
the history of Coppertone, which is of course famous for
that old logo with the toddler and the dog pulling
at the underwear, and I guess the idea was to
show a tan line there. And what's weird is that
the original tagline for that campaign was don't be.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
A pale face, isn't uh isn't it the girl's bum
that's exposed? Like why did they use that tagline?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I was curious about the exact same thing, and I
guess Coppertne was mainly about preventing but also allowing you
to tan. And before they had that Baby on the
Beach campaign, copper Tone's logo was of a Native American
chief basically encouraging everyone to get tan. They later changed
it to tan, Don't burn and for the fastest tan,
(07:16):
things like that, both of which are a little more PC.
But you know, obviously we're going to get into sunscreens
in just a bit. But as you were talking about
the ancient Egyptians who were lotioning up with rice brand
and jasmine, it did get me thinking about the Dylan
like approaches that some other civilizations used to protect themselves
from the sun.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Like umbrella hats.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Well more umbrellas and hats, not really that brilliant combination
that was eventually brought together. But one thing I found
interesting was that parasols were symbols of status and power
throughout Asia and Africa. And again this does get into
racist notions where fair skin sort of signified higher birth,
but ceremonial parasols which were carried by tendants. They actually
(08:01):
helped preserve the pale complexions of the elite, which reinforced
their entitlement to rule, so sun protection was actually subject
to law, like for example, in Assyria, only the king
himself could use a parasol. Now by this sixteen hundred's
personal sun shades had filtered down to a few more
of the classes, and parasols were customary and Mediterranean Europe,
(08:23):
mostly among women, where sunburn or freckled skin was generally
avoided at all costs by polite society, and gentil ladies
went to great links to preserve the pale complexion expected
of their rank and their sex.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
I know, you think about all the toxic powders that
women of the court used to wear in Victorian times
to make themselves whiter, or like Japanese women would wear,
and it had mercury in it. I think the Victorian
women had arsenic in it, and it was all to
show people they were of such high class that they
never had to work in the sun or be exposed
(08:56):
as sun. But you wonder how did we go from
those extremes to like tans being a sign of status.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
It really started in the nineteen twenties when socialites started
frequenting glamorous beaches of California and the French Riviera, and
it became fashionable to acquire a sun tan. And there's
a lot of chatter about how Coco Chanel kind of
launched a movement and used tan mannequins, but actually it
predates her.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Oh that's interesting. So now that we've talked a little
bit about the history of sunscreens and went a little
off track with parasols, let's get back to original question.
Do sunscreens actually do anything? All?
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Right? Well, why don't we start with that Seinfeld clip
U teased at the beginning of the show. So what
is papa.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Papa is an organic compound that can absorb UVB rays
and those are the UV rays that caused sunburns. So
it was a really popular ingredient in sunscreens starting in
the nineteen forties. PAPA stands for para amino benzoic acid,
but unfortu actunately, it caused allergic reactions in a significant
(10:03):
part of the population. So PAPA is no longer approved
by the FDA for use in sunscreens.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
And I'm guessing it gets banned in the nineties, like
around the time of that clip from Seinfeld.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
So weirdly, the FDA only put PABA on its list
of unsafe for ineffective compounds in twenty nineteen. So even
though George Costanza warned us about PAPA way back in
nineteen ninety three, the FDA does tend to move a
little bit slowly on these things.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yeah, I mean to be fair, George Costanza also lied
about being a marine biologist and tried to get the
Yankees to wear cotton uniform so he's not exactly a
trusted source. But how exactly is the FDA defining sunscreens
and making some of these decisions?
Speaker 1 (10:47):
So I came prepared for this question. Sunscreen refers to
a product in the US which is typically a lotion, cream, gel,
or spray that blocks harmful UV rays from damaging your skin,
and it also includes filters, which are the active ingredients
in sunscreen. A sunscreen product is a mix of various moisturizers, fragrances, preservatives,
(11:10):
and of course the filters. But these filters can vary,
and in fact, I'm sure you've heard some of your
fancier friends talk about how European and Asian sunscreens are
far superior.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, I mean people always say you got to go
far away to find the best stuff. You think about
Belgian chocolates, Japanese kit cats, I mean, I know you
think about Japanese kit cats, Korean face mask and fried chicken,
and pop music like the list goes on.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
I mean, the K pop thing is crazy to me.
Like the last time I was in India, kids knew
more about kpop than they did about American bands for
the first time, and that was something that never happened
in my lifetime. But back to foreign sunscreens, So the
sunscreen abroad works better because the filters are actually better.
There are all kinds of UV filters that have been
approved for decades in Europe and Asia, but aren't approved
(11:58):
in the US because in most of the world, sunscreen
is actually classified as a cosmetic but in the US
that isn't the case.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
And why is that.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Back in nineteen thirty eight, the Federal Food, Drug and
Cosmetic Act was passed and it required sunscreens to be
classified as both a cosmetic and a drug and drugs
have to be tested on animals.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Wait, we had a law that required us to test
sunscreen on animals.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yeah, I mean the intentions were good. And remember this
is from nineteen thirty eight when the Act was really
a huge advance in US food policy, and it took
a lot of effort, Like the US largely through the
efforts of women's groups, pioneered policies that were designed to
protect the pocketbooks of consumers, and all these standards were
implemented for safety and ensuring value. But sunscreen fell into
(12:48):
this weird gray area because of the question of is
sunscreen a drug or cosmetic? And the thing is it's
pretty hard to answer. Like the way the fd and
C ACT defined cosmetics is quo as articles intended to
be rubbed, poured, sprinkled, or sprayed on, introduced into, or
otherwise applied to the human body for cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness,
(13:12):
or altering the appearance.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Okay, I mean, with the exception of sprinkling, I don't
think I've ever sprinkled sunscreen, But that does sound like
what sunscreen is.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Yeah. And the way the FDNC defines drugs is articles
intended for use in the mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
That that also sounds what sunscreen is.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, so you see the problem, and it isn't just sunscreen.
So like a lot of products fall into this both
category if you think about it, like anti dandrift shampoo
is a cosmetic because you know it's used to clean
the hair, and it's also a drug because it's intended
to treat dan drift. Toothpaste claims to freshen your breath
and cleanse the teeth, but it also contains fluoride. Like,
(13:52):
these products all have to meet the standards of both
cosmetics and drugs.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
So to get back to the animal thing, it still
sounds like one of those standards for drugs in the
US is testing it on animals.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah, And to be clear, there was a new law
passed last year that says drugs no longer have to
be tested on animals. President Biden signed a law that
you can use organ chips and computer modeling and other
types of electronics in place of animal testing. But according
to the journal Science, it'll take a while for the
industry to adapt to these methods and it's unclear how
(14:25):
much it'll actually change things because, as one scientist in
the article put it, quote, we can drop a new
candidate drug onto a bunch of liver cells, and we
can see that it doesn't damage them, But what we
don't know is whether it's going to make a person cough,
whether it's going to damage their own testines or their brain.
So it's a really deeply complicated issue, and drugs obviously
(14:47):
deserve to be tested deeply, but the European Union has
long banned any animal testing of cosmetics, which is how
they define sunscreen, and because the regulations are more lax
in places like France, they can actually innovate and test
much more quickly.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
All right, let's talk a little bit about the specifics
you see on a sunscreen, Like what type of sunscreen
are you using?
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I try to go for every single benefit. It' says,
so like a fifty plus SPF broad spectrum waterproof REEF
safe sunscreen.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
You just said so much, nothing like you know, you
don't even know. I don't think I know.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
I just like words and I trust advertising. But I
feel like if I if I slap some of this
on my face and go play a tennis, I've covered right.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, I mean, the first thing you should know is
that there's no such thing as an all day, waterproof,
sweat proof sunscreen. So if that's what you're hoping for,
it actually doesn't exist, Mango.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
I mean, I'm not playing that long because I'm out
of ship, so all day isn't really interesting for me.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
That's fair. But regardless, if you're out there for more
than a few sets, you just have to reapply sunscreen
like the rest of us, after you sweat or swim
or just after a of hours.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
And what about this reef safe business, Like, I don't
want to hurt the reefs, and you know how much
I love reefs.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
You love the reefs. I mean, there's no standard or
regulated meaning behind reef, say for reef friendly. This is
something that comes up in a lot of places like
Hawaii or Australia, where they obviously want to protect the
coral and so some of the sunscreens that are labeled
as reef save for sunscreens that aren't using things like
oxybenzone or octanoxate too filters that might be harmful to
(16:30):
coral reefs. But some of these reef safe products use
minerals like titanium dioxide, which can produce hydrogen peroxide in
the water, a chemical that's actually harmful to marine organisms.
So again it's it's pretty murky when you look at
something like that. But the reefs are under a much
greater threat from climate change than from sun's grain, to
(16:50):
be sure.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
And what about the SPF label on my ies on screen?
Speaker 2 (16:55):
So SPF stands for sun protection factor, and it's a
measure of how well sunscreen protects the skin from UVB rays,
not UVA. So quick Google search tells you that SPF
compares how long it would take for the sun's UV
rays to red and skin without sunscreen to how long
it would take with sunscreen. And if it takes twenty
(17:16):
minutes for unprotected skin to turn red, SPF thirty. Sunscreen
prevents reddening for thirty times longer. But again, some of
this is a little bit murky, Like there's this book
called sun Tanning in the twentieth Century, and in it
it talks about how spfs are really useful for manufacturers
because fear is a powerful selling tool. Like in nineteen
(17:39):
eighty two, this Forbes piece showed that sixty five percent
of all sunscreen sold had an SPF value of only
SPF two to SPF eight. But by nineteen ninety two,
when things like ozone holes and skin cancer were in
the public conversation, and sunscreen started to have this halo quality.
As this per detective goop, most sunscreens started being SPF
(18:03):
fifteen or higher, which is obviously better for protection, but
part of the reason for the change was that companies
could charge more. Like at the time, companies could charge
four ninety nine or so for a bottle of SPF four,
almost seven dollars for SPF eight and seven ninety nine
for SPF fifteen, But the numbers didn't exactly match up,
(18:25):
like SPF fifty supposedly only gave six percent more protection
than SPF fifteen, So again it's all a little confusing.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
So what SPF should I be using? Then?
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Yeah, there's this whole debate about this, and we'll get
into what Australia is recommending in a bit as a
nation with some of the most skin cancer. But the
American Academy of Dermatology recommends SPF thirty or higher, with
an emphasis on higher, like most recommend anything from SPF
fifty to seventy.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Great, so I feel like at least I'm covered on
that front. And what about the bit that says broad spectrum.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah, broad spectrum is a real term, but it means
a lot of different things. So in the US, broad
spectrum refers only to protection against UVA light. In Europe,
broad spectrum also refers to the quality of UVB shielding.
So brands earn the right to use that term broad
spectrum if laboratory measurements of UVA protection are at least
(19:24):
a third the values of laboratory measurements of UVB protection.
You got this right. This is all super clear.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
So remind me what's the difference between VA and UVV, Like,
which one's the bad one.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Well, they can actually both be harmful. So UVB radiation
makes up about five percent of the sun's UV light.
It causes sunburns, damages the top layers of the skin,
can cause DNA mutations that lead to skin cancer. And
UVA radiation makes up about ninety five percent of the
sun's UV light, and these rays penetrate deep into the skin.
(20:00):
They go past the epidermis, which is that outermost layer
of course, and into the dermis, which is that middle layer.
They can even pass through glass, which is why you
can get a sunburn while driving or sitting by a window.
So these are the rays that caused sun tans. They
cause wrinkles, sunspots, collagen damage, and those signs of aging.
(20:21):
But what many people don't realize is that UVA rays
can also cause cancer. I mean, all of.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
This is so scary. So if you buy a bottle
of sunscreen in the US and it says broad spectrum,
it means it might not protect against UVB light at all.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
I mean not only that, but according to a twenty
ten Environmental Working Group analysis of four hundred and forty
six beach and sports sunscreens, all of which had SPF
ratings of thirty plus, nearly two thirds of them provided
inadequate UVA protection, and a product survey by Procter and
Gamble in two thousand and four noted that a third
(20:58):
of products that claimed spectrum protection on the label didn't
actually provide it. The most common UVA filter in the
US is avibin zone, which was the last big filter
approved in the US in the nineteen nineties. But among
the UVA filters approved in Europe, the good ones we
can't get, like three of them, tenosorb S, tenosorb M,
(21:21):
and mexiil SX are between four and five times more
protective than avibenzone.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
So I get that Europe and Asia have all these
advanced sunscreens because of our I guess, rigorous testing process.
But how do we know if these foreign filters are
actually safe?
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Well, people in Europe and Asia have been using these
newer chemical filters for years, decades in some cases, so
industry advocates argue that there is plenty of data to
support their safety. No one seems to be experiencing any
widespread health problems related to these sunscreens.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I mean, I guess when you've got populations of two
continents and you've got about a decade of experience, it
sounds like good data.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yeah, I mean, but the FBA is still dragging its feet.
And on top of that, sunscreen manufacturers are reluctant to
attempt the approval process because you know, the return on
investment on sunscreen is low. Most of the UV filters
in question aren't eligible for patent protection.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
That's where they're not actually covered by patents.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, and because the profit margin on suns green is
nowhere near what it is on pharmaceuticals. The battery of
tests the FDA asks for takes years and cost a
lot of money. Companies really aren't that incentivized to enter
the US market. For instance, the top chemical maker DSM
recently started advancing a filter known as tensorb S through
(22:41):
the FDA approval process. It would be the first new
UV filter to hit the US market since Abben Zone
in the nineteen nineties. But the final bill for this
process will come to between twelve million and twenty million dollars.
Seven other organic V filters, all of which are in
regular use and the rest of the world, are stuck
(23:01):
in the FDA approval pipeline, even though Congress has repeatedly
tried to force the agency to move faster.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
I mean, it's kind of fine to see that these
things are actually bipartisan, Like Rand Paul was the one
pushing away from animal testing to get meaningful drugs tested
quicker and out to market faster, particularly during the COVID era.
And then AOC was using TikTok to get people to
press Congress for changes to sunscreen regulation. And I know
(23:28):
she got some criticism because people were saying that she
was making all this ruckus about a beauty product, but
sunscreen obviously impacts a massive number of people's health.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yeah, of course. And it's particularly weird because while the
FDA is dragging its feet to approve new filters. They're
worried about some of the existing filters, where an FDA
terms sunscreens that are not grace GRASEE, which is an
acronym for generally recognized as safe and effective. So agencies
(24:00):
has recently published a studies showing that under normal usage conditions,
most commonly used organic UV filters show up in the
bloodstream at levels that trigger a toxicology study requirement.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
That sounds terrifying.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Super scary, But I mean the thing is, that's as
far as the FDA will go with their internal research.
Like the agency says it's up to the industry to
generate the rest of the data.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
So they're basically saying, there's enough of this stuff going
to your body that you should check if it's toxic,
but we're not going to pay for that research.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
That's that's pretty much sums it up.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Oh my god, that is a terrible place to leave consumers,
especially when you look at the stats right like skin
cancer rates are so high in the US right now,
one in five Americans will develop skin cancer by the
age of seventy. This year, the American Cancer Society reported
that about three point three million Americans were diagnosed with
skin cancer, and each year that number is increasing.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yeah, but this misinformation about Quote Kim sunscreens was so
bad that the FDA had to issue its own caveat.
Like the statement they put out says, while research indicates
that some topical drugs can be absorbed into the body
through the skin, this does not mean these drugs are unsafe,
but this finding does call for further testing to determine
(25:19):
the safety of repeated use.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
It's such a messy statement after making a mess of
it to begin with. But one thing I think is
weird is that it almost feels like the attitude towards
sunscreen and sun protection is that they're luxury products. And
this is what I was getting to with the AOC
stuff that you know, it feels like these are only
things that you need if you're spending time on a yacht.
(25:43):
But of course that's not true. And when you think
about people who regularly work in the sun, like farm
workers and people who do manual labor outdoors, whether that's
construction or landscaping or whatever, it really affects everyone. So
I'd love to hear, like, what is some practical advice here?
How do we stay safe.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Well, Dylan actually has the right idea as always. I
mean when does Dylan not have the right idea. So
staying out of the sun is key, and you can
do it with hats and clothes that now have SPF
ratings and of course parasols. And so we already talked
about using sunscreens that have an SPF of thirty or higher,
and a lot of dermatologists advocate to sticking to fifty
(26:22):
or higher. But SPF doesn't matter if you're not applying
the sunscreen correctly. So an adult body in a bathing
suit typically needs at least one liquid ounce or what
fills your palm applied every two hours or after you
swim or sweat a lot, and make sure it is
not expired.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Yeah, I always forget that a sunscreen can actually expire.
And what if I've already built up my base tan.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Well, I think you have a natural based tand because
of your skin color. But for those who think a
base tan from the sun or a tanning bed will
protect your body from the sun, a quote base tan
is actually sun damage. It's your body producing melanin to
try to protect itself from more UV rays penetrating deeper
into your skin. Besides, a base tan only provides an
(27:11):
SPF of around say five.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Which is less than olive oil.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
At eight, it is exactly less than olive oil. You're right,
and you're better off slathering yourself in delicious olive oil
for sun protection than trying to build a base tan,
if you want to put it that way.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Well, I'm waiting for the FDA to approve an olive
oil sunscreen, but you know, gives me safe sun protection
but also tastes great. Drizzled over sliced tomatoes.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Love olive oil so much it's weird. I didn't expect
to be hungry talking about US sunscreen. Well, one other
thing to think about is that there's still a lot
of debate on all of this. The standards we're talking
about are really American notions. But there's an article in
the Atlantic by Rowan Jacobsen who talks about how Australia
has really changed on this issue. Australia has by far
(27:58):
the world's highest skin care answer rate. So in the
nineteen eighties they launched this campaign of quote slip slop
slap and it was basically as big as our just
Say No campaign in the US, and the idea was
to promote protection from the sun. Slip on a shirt,
slop on some sunscreen, and slap on a hat. It's
(28:19):
just so much fun to say, slip, slap, slap. Yeah. Yeah,
but keeping people out of the sun wasn't the answer,
because sunlight has all these benefits that a vitamin D
pill doesn't give you, including protecting from things like MS
and diabetes. Anyway, recently the country has revised their sun
protection advice according to skin color and susceptibility to skin cancer. So,
(28:42):
according to this same piece, for those with pale skin
or olive skin plus other risk factors, practice extreme caution,
keep slip slop slapping.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
For those with.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Olive oil or pale brown skin, take a balanced approach,
using sun screen whenever the UV index is at least
a three, which is most days of the year in Australia. Actually,
and for those with dark skin, you really only need
sunscreen for extended outings in the bright sun. So it's
a more complicated approach, but it's one of the country's
health officials actually stand by.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
I guess that makes sense that it doesn't have to
be this one size fits all approach. Yeah, and this
whole thing is so wordy and so mush to think about.
But you know, one thing we don't have to think
a lot about is whether or not to end this
on a fact off.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Let's do it, all right, So here's one to kick
us off. Kristin Little has the Guinness record for most
spray tans in one hour. That's not a record I
would have thought about where she got one hundred and
seven spray tans. Apparently she wasn't just doing it for
(29:55):
the glow up. Kristin is in the spray tanning business
and did this stunt to raise awareness for skin cancer
and also to fundraise for a local cancer center.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
I feel like that's a very different type of dunking
booth than most of the year. So, speaking of fake tan's,
we've all heard about how Richard Nixon lost the election
to Kennedy because of how pale and sweaty he looked
on TV during those debates. But one thing I'd never
heard before was that JFK's ten wasn't natural. According to
(30:26):
David Halberstam's reporting, JFK's appearance was the result of his
experimenting with Man ten, the first self tanning lotion.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
I would have no idea that that existed at the
time of JFK being around. That's wild. Well, did you
know that even when you're dead, your body can keep tanning?
According to a twenty twenty three paper in the American
Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, quote, post mortem tanning
is very much a thing. The paper actually describes and
(30:57):
analyzes three bodies from different climates had been left in
the sun and showed tan lines from the exposure after death.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
That is so weird and so morbid, But I guess
it's good to know. Like, if you have a dead relative,
you can send them to a tanning booth before a funeral.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Yeah, oh, good call.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
So here's a weird one from that GEO. To protect
itself from the sun, the West African lungfish goes into estivation,
or a summer version of hibernation, where it bundles itself
in a cocoon of mucus and then digs itself into
the mud.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
That's one way for us to handle it next time
we go to the beach. All right, Well, according to Vox,
higher spfs will give you more protection. In a study
published in twenty seventeen, two hundred people in Vail, Colorado,
applied SPF fifty Son's Green to one side of their
face and SPF one hundred to the other. I sort
(31:53):
of love this study, And so the next day, forty
one percent of them were sunburned on their SPF fifty
side compared to fourteen percent on their SPF one hundred side.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
I love that pretty great. So I think it's pretty
easy for us all to take the sun for granted,
especially in the summertime. But there's a group of kids,
the so called children of the Night, who no amount
of sunscreen can help because they're allergic to the sun.
And Atlas Obscura writes about them and describes the phenomena.
It's called zeroderma pigmentosum. And this phenomena actually makes summer
(32:31):
camp or any daytime activity painful and even fatally dangerous.
But luckily, since nineteen ninety five, there's a place called
Camps Sundown in Prairieville, New York, and it's been catering
to these kids and it really lets them reclaim the summer.
They get to do night swims, flashlight tag late night movies,
and campfires, which all takes place under the glow of
(32:54):
the moonlight.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
That is so sweet. It's such a great idea you
have and did it with the sweetest facts. So I
think I'm gonna have to give you this week's trophy, Mango.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Thank you so much, and I'm gonna grab it from
your slippery sunscreeny hands before we head out. Please remember
we love hearing from you, but more importantly, our moms
love hearing from you, and you can always hit us
up with questions and comments at our mom's email address,
keyty Genius Moms at gmail dot com. And that is
(33:26):
it for this week's episode from Will, Dylan, Mary, and myself.
Thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is
a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted
(33:50):
by Will Pearson and me Mongagetikler and research by our
good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and
produced by the one Wonderful of Dylan Fagan with support
from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart
by Katrina Norvel and Ali Perry, with social media support
from Sasha Gay trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey. For
(34:13):
more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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