Safe Sunscreen Kickoff

Hi everyone! Its Emily here again! With this great weather we have had lately and summer just around the corner, I figured it would be important to fill you guys in about sunscreen. Besides which, on this special Earth day, the POB team kicks off a week to celebrate safe sunscreen! If any of you are as pale as I am, you know just how much sunscreen we use throughout the summer. Have you ever wondered what is in your sunscreen?

I recently looked into this after attending a Sunscreen Educational Session at Expo West last month that sparked a lot of interest. I was alarmed to find out that about 60% of the sunscreens in our typical stores contain a chemical called Oxybenzone. I immediately referenced the TEDX (The Endo crine Disruptor Exchange) and low and behold, Oxybenzone is an endocrine disrupter! We all know what that means, thanks to research assistant Lia previous blog post. This chemical we are using to protect our skin from the sun is actually increasing the toxicity in our bodies and is contributing to breast cancer risk. So now you’re probably freaking out just as I did when I came across this information. So what can you do instead to protect yourself from the sun’s harmful rays and reduce your risk of breast cancer? It’s actually quite simple; don’t buy sunscreen that lists Oxybenzone as an ingredient.

There are plenty of these sunscreens out there that use ingredients such as zinc oxide and titanium dioxide that still protect our skin without messing with our endocrine systems.  The difference is that these ingredients do not enter our bodies as Oxybenzone does.  If you are wondering if your favorite sunscreen is safe, refer to the EWG (Environmental Working Group) report , and find additional alternatives,  and tips for safer products http://breakingnews.ewg.org/2011sunscreen/. They also created a handy dandy sunscreen mobile app that has all of that valuable information found in that report at your fingertips. You can download it for free onto your iPhone so while you are shopping around you can educate yourself about the safest sunscreen and the ones to avoid.

While we don’t usually advocate for specific brands in our blog posts, we are so excited to be launching an on-the-UMass-campus promotion on safe sunscreen with Badger Balm. If you check their ratings in the EWG materials/app, you will see it is a recommended product with great safety ratings. Yesterday, some of the POB team members headed to the facility in New Hampshire to learn more. What a company, and so dedicated to the science of safety! We are so grateful to Badger Balm for taking care of our skin and our breasts with their sunscreens!

Enjoy the sunshine safely!

–Emily