Realfoodie
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2012
Hi everyone,
I just thought I would post some info about sunscreens. Chemical sunscreens need to get to a certain level in your skin to protect you, and if they are exposed to sun before that they are damaged by the sun and actually because toxic (think free radicals...those cancer causing buggers). Not to mention they are chemicals...and can wash off and effect the ecosystems that they are probably trying to protect. I would suspect excess chemicals from many tourists and coral probably don't mix well.
Here is a great sunscreen guide that we use. http://breakingnews.ewg.org/2012sunscreen/. There will be an updated version for 2013. They rate hundreds of sunscreens based on it's ingredients to see how bad they are for you. There is some info on effectiveness as well. The goal is to use sunscreens that are as low a number as possible. The higher the number, the worse they get.
Mineral sunscreens physically block the sun. I am not 100% sure, but I suspect that zinc oxide is the biodegradable one. I am not sure if titanium dioxide is, but that is generally the other mineral used (I don't care for that one as much). Because they are mineral (Badger, for instance) they are thick. A tip is to rub them between your hands to warm it up before applying. I can sunscreen my kids in minutes with that trick.
We personally use Badger and have now for 2 years. I have found I don't have to reapply it very often, and we haven't had a single burn when using it, even when spending whole afternoons at the beach on 100 degree Wisconsin days. Granted that isn't Cozumel, but we will have ours with us next week when we go there!
Anyways, thought I should post it for anyone trying to figure this out!!
Colleen
I just thought I would post some info about sunscreens. Chemical sunscreens need to get to a certain level in your skin to protect you, and if they are exposed to sun before that they are damaged by the sun and actually because toxic (think free radicals...those cancer causing buggers). Not to mention they are chemicals...and can wash off and effect the ecosystems that they are probably trying to protect. I would suspect excess chemicals from many tourists and coral probably don't mix well.
Here is a great sunscreen guide that we use. http://breakingnews.ewg.org/2012sunscreen/. There will be an updated version for 2013. They rate hundreds of sunscreens based on it's ingredients to see how bad they are for you. There is some info on effectiveness as well. The goal is to use sunscreens that are as low a number as possible. The higher the number, the worse they get.
Mineral sunscreens physically block the sun. I am not 100% sure, but I suspect that zinc oxide is the biodegradable one. I am not sure if titanium dioxide is, but that is generally the other mineral used (I don't care for that one as much). Because they are mineral (Badger, for instance) they are thick. A tip is to rub them between your hands to warm it up before applying. I can sunscreen my kids in minutes with that trick.
We personally use Badger and have now for 2 years. I have found I don't have to reapply it very often, and we haven't had a single burn when using it, even when spending whole afternoons at the beach on 100 degree Wisconsin days. Granted that isn't Cozumel, but we will have ours with us next week when we go there!
Anyways, thought I should post it for anyone trying to figure this out!!
Colleen
