With so many sunscreens sporting more toxins than protection, it can be a real challenge to decide whether it is less risky to forgo it altogether. But then, in the back of your mind, the skin cancer questionwill always remain - nipping at you slowly but surely. And for those of us with aesthetic concerns, the idea of sun spots and wrinkles creeps in as an all too definite reality without sunscreen. What's a person to do?LIVESTRONG and thinksport are making it a lot easier on us! How, you ask? They've developed a "formulation that is already top ranked for safe sunscreen by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and is free of biologically harmful chemicals." The active ingredient is non-nano zinc oxide (20%) and this sunscreen is ranked safe (1-2) by the EWG.
Since zinc oxide is a physical sunscreen (meaning it blocks sun rays by reflecting them), it can be quite unattractive as solid cream on the skin. To minimize the opaque nature of zinc oxide, it is typically scaled down to 30 to 200 nm. This allows for less noticeable application to the skin, but still keeps it large enough not to cross through the skin (such as happens with nano-particles). According to the LiveStrong website and SmartSkinCare, "zinc oxide has a slight edge over titanium dioxide. While titanium dioxide is effective at blocking ultraviolet-B and short-wave ultraviolet-A rays, it is less effective than zinc dioxide at blocking long ultraviolet-A rays. Zinc oxide's ability to block different types of rays makes it one of the most effective sun protection products on the market at fighting the sun's rays. Zinc oxide is often combined with additional ultraviolet-B blockers to provide the most complete broad-spectrum sunscreen." The thinksport website has plenty of useful information to absorb too, including the differences between chemical and physical sunscreens, the truth about SPF ratings, and what's up with nanoparticles and why you should be very careful about your product purchases. You can read all about it here (scroll down to the "what else you might want to know" section!
With sunny weather quickly becoming the norm, we have been applying the thinksport/LIVESTRONG suncreen for a few weeks now and have found it to be very effective! Not only is it water-resistant, it has a SPF of 30+. Of course, the higher the SPF, the more protection a sunscreen offers against UV-B (sunburn). So this means that you can stay in the sun over 30 times longer than you would normally be able to without getting burned! At the modest price of $15.99, your wallet will be just as happy as your protected skin! And as if that wasn't awesome enough, the purchase of this product guarantees a minimum $1.5 million donation towards the fight against cancer!
