Sunlight: The Ugly and the FDA

Last time I started talking about UV radiation and ended with a note about melanoma and how sunlight can actually help prevent melanoma, in moderation. It’s currently the recommendation that you get 15 – 30 minutes of direct sunlight a day on as much of your skin as you would care to bare to whoever is around. This is a moderate amount that is very beneficial for manufacturing vitamins, preventing melanoma and things like that.

Beyond that you get into some trouble with damaging the skin. The way UVA damages the skin is through DNA mutation, and as we’ve all heard at some point in our life that can lead to cancer. There were a number of types of skin cancer, whether it is basal cell or melanoma or different types of skin cancer, that can arise from too much exposure. It also wrinkles the skin, damages the skin in other ways. Too much sun is not a good thing.

What about sun screens? We’ve all heard, yes, lather it on. Now we’re hearing it may not be effective and some are saying that it, in itself, is damaging. There is a huge conundrum, a huge mental problem going on. Do or don’t I? Let’s talk about those for just a minute.

Part of that problem has been caused by the government standard, the FDA nomenclature, if you will, the wording that they use. The SPF (sun protection factor) only takes into account the UVB part of the spectrum. Well, that’s the part that causes basal cell carcinomas and weathering of skin and some of the tanning. We thought as long as we were protecting the skin with UVB protectants, PABA and those type of compounds, we were doing a good thing. The problem is there is that other part of the spectrum, the UVA part that most of the common things in sunblock and sunscreen don’t block. That’s a part of the ultraviolet area that causes melanoma and other problems. So we haven’t been protecting ourselves for some time against a very, very harmful part of the light spectrum.

Now what do you do? They are trying to come out with some new sunscreens which protect against both A and B UV rays. Some people in the state of California (which is always on the forefront of what causes cancer it seems) are actually suing most of the major manufacturers of these sunscreens because they say they mislead the public into believing they were protected. They say it lasts 6 hours when it usually only lasts an hour or two. There is a whole lot of controversy in the area of sunscreens and sunblocks right now.

Next time I’ll tell you what I do when I go out into the sun, and what I think works best to protect your skin.