Wear Your Hat!! And don’t forget the sunscreen
 

It used to be a rite of summer: the annual first sunburn. Moms had remedies like calamine lotion or aloe vera. Teens would compare burn lines and celebrate when the peeling started.

But not all traditions are worth continuing. Here are a few facts:

• Just one blistering sunburn in childhood more than doubles your child’s chances of developing melanoma later in life.

• Sunscreen must be applied 30 minutes before going outside and reapplied every two hours or after swimming or excessive sweating, rules that few kids follow.

• About 90 percent of non-melanoma skin cancers are associated with exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun.

• If you are in the habit of leaving your sunscreen in a hot car, you need to add the habit of throwing it out on a regular basis. Being heated up, or just age, will lower the effectiveness of any sunscreen over time.

In other words, forget your carefree childhood of not worrying about a sunburn and get your kids started on a lifetime regimen of sunscreen, hats, and appropriate clothing. You’ll probably be saving their noses from disfiguring basal cell carcinoma, and you may be saving their lives.

A good place to educate yourself is at the Skin Cancer Foundation (skincancer.org), which maintains an informative website.

“The Skin Cancer Foundation recommends reapplying sunscreen every two hours,” says Rebecca Wiley of the Foundation. “We also suggest that consumers look for a sunscreen with some combination of the following ingredients: avobenzone, ecamsule (a.k.a. Mexoryl), oxybenzone, titanium dioxide and zinc oxide.”

The problem is finding such a sunscreen. A scan of all the brands sold on Drugstore.com came up with not a single sunscreen containing even most of these ingredients. In fact, the general rule of thumb seems to be that there are two types of sunscreen:

• “Chemical-free” or “clear zinc” seems to mean sun blocks containing zinc and/or titanium.

• “Full-spectrum” or a similar phrase seems to mean most of the other ingredients mentioned.

The only sunscreens found with a mix of both chemical and mineral ingredients are Coppertone Kids Pure & Simple Lotion SPF 50 and Jason Natural Cosmetics Sunbrellas Sun Care Kid's Block, SPF 46. The Foundation maintains a “Seal of Recommendation” page in which they recommend sunscreens that they have tested.

The next problem comes in the “every two hours” rule. Except for on the face, you can punt on this by having your kids wear protective clothing, especially when swimming. Lots of swim gear now comes with its SPF factor printed on a tag, and Santa Cruz is a great place to find an array of the most fashionable styles.

But in the end it comes down to training: By the time your child is going off to school every day on his own, can you reasonably expect him to reapply his own sunscreen? Does he leave the house with sunscreen on his face every day?

If your child has fair, easy-to-burn skin, it’s a must to train her in skin care early on. If your child has medium skin which tans easily, it’s just as important to stress sunscreen on the face every single day, and on the rest of the body when going outside in short sleeves.

What about if your child has brown or dark brown skin? Worried about that scary article you read about Vitamin D deficiency? Look at some commonly held myths:

Brown-skinned people don’t get skin cancer

Here’s the truth: Brown-skinned people get skin cancer less often than light-skinned people, but when they get it, it can be much more deadly.

“Darker skinned people should follow the same skin cancer prevention guidelines as light-skinned people,” Wiley suggests. That includes a minimum of SPF 15 on the face every day.

Using sunscreen causes Vitamin D deficiency.

The latest research shows that it’s nearly impossible to get all the Vitamin D a kid needs from sun exposure, with or without sunscreen, so make sure they’re eating a good diet, and supplementing with a Vitamin D/Calcium supplement can’t hurt.

Sunscreen itself causes cancer.

This is a dangerously misinformed warning that magazines like to trot out on occasion. Like many things (broccoli, red wine, rhubarb), excessive sunscreen could cause problems. But appropriate sunscreen usage prevents many more deadly cancers than it could ever produce.

And our final myth:

You don’t need sunscreen on cloudy days.

Yes, our glorious sun doesn’t shine through the fog, but its harmful rays have no problem penetrating it. Anytime your child is outdoors for an extended period, apply sunscreen.

Even if you have a fond memory of sunbathing with your friends to see who could burn the most, you’ll be doing your kids a favor by ensuring that their memories are on the safer side.

Perhaps when they are adults, they will remember fondly Mom screaming out at them on the playground: “Wear Your Hat!!”


Suki Wessling is a local writer who is a ridiculously fair-skinned mother of two pretty fair-skinned children. They almost always wear sunscreen, though sometimes that requires a wrestling match with their mom.