Sunburn, Suntans and Sunscreen

don't you. It's gonna be a great of one. And then in Minneapolis at the Pantageous Theater where we've been before. It's lovely September. Yeah, and then we're gonna swing down to Austin. It's gonna be during Austin City Limits, although it has nothing to do with Austin City limits. Will be there October ten, yes, and then we're going to Lovely Lawrence, Kansas go Jayhawks, yeah on October eleventh. And hey, if you're in Kansas City or anywhere in that area,

this is your chance. Get in your car. Yeah. Uh, if you are anywhere near Brooklyn, well then you should go to the Bellhouse October. Will be there all three nights, and finally we're gonna wrap it up here in Atlanta at the Bucket Theater on November four for a benefit show where we are donating all of the money's to Lifeline Animal Project of Atlanta and the National Down Syndrome Society. YEP. So for all this information again visually and for links two tickets, just go to s y s K Live

dot com. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bright, there's Jerry's Stuff you Should Know. That summer sunburn and addition your tan, well, I did think it was kind of funny. I probably have more sun on my face than I've had in years. Yes, very easily, I would say, And I've been in the sun a lot more lately. But I have been applying sunscrew green. But as you will see very shortly, I

haven't been the best at reapplying it. No, That's what I'm guilty of too, And so I end up getting a tan, and then, of course, like a dummy, I'm like, hey, tants look pretty good. I look fox people look good with a little bit of a tan, which is just how you fall into that trap of doing what's ultimately very bad for yourself. Next up, Ascot's going down the George Hamilton's route. But the rest of my body, well, my lower my lower arms are tan and my face

is tan. Do you have like milk bottle calves? Tell me everything else is white? Take off your pants, they're already off. Okay, as always, your pants really are off? Um, Jerry, did you know Chuck's pants are off? She's known for nine years? Remember the the T shirt that listener made his pants off? Mike's on or Mike's on pants off. I can't remember the order that we do it. A wax on, wax off. I think, uh, this one's long overdo though, I think and pilot under our general public

service casts. Yeah, there's a lot of info that's floating around that is wrong. Yeah, starting with the idea that tans are healthy or even protective. Yeah, Like, well, we'll go through all these and bust some myths, but handing bad company saying like oh you need that vitamin D yeah, or hey that based hand that will help you not burn. We'll go through all this we're going to but let's start Let's start where everything starts, Chuck, Let's start with

the sun. Alright, Sorry, So the Sun is streaming down. You're familiar with the Sun. Our star, closest star, divides light, heat, that kind of stuff. It's also bearing down on us deadly radiation, trying to kill us all the time, right, And there's three types, Well, there's three kinds of um

energy that the Sun shoots at us. There's infrared heat, there's visible light light, and then there's ultra violet light scar one ultra violet radiation, right, and then you can break down ultra violet radiation into three more components, u v A, UVB, and UVC. Actually, if we didn't have our atmosphere, we'd all be dead right now, just because the UVC. It's extremely deadly. But do right, if you're an astronaut, you gotta worry about UVC, But those of us here on Earth, we don't. We only have to

worry about u v A and UVB. And for decades, ever since we started thinking about protecting ourselves from the sun, we've basically been focused on UVB. Yeah. UVB is what will sun burn you, right, which is why everybody wants to protect themselves from it. But it turns out, as we'll see, u v A is not it's even worse than UVB. No, it really isn't. But those are the

three kinds. And when sunlight comes here on Earth, and even when it doesn't, if it's reflected on a cloudy day or through fog or something like that, don't be fooled, no, because U v A still getting through. And as you'll see, you need to protect yourself as a matter of fact, because we will see some people recommend that you use sunscreen every day, all over your body, every day, indoors and out. Well, if you do that, you will probably

never get skin cancer, that's right, unless it's genetic. Yeah, but you're definitely helping yourself out right. Uh. So you're talking about that sunlight beaming down and fog and cloud cover and all that stuff. You probably, if you've ever been snow skiing, gotten sunburned because on a sunny day that snow will reflect about of UV light. Yeah, so you get the sun coming down on you and then you're also getting a second dose of it reflected from

the snow at a rate. If you're at the beach and you wonder why you might burn a little more at the beach. It's because that sand does the same thing to a rate of about where you will not get sunburned, they say, is in a greenhouse. Yeah, did you know that. I didn't know that. You're you'll sweat to death, sure, and you can still get um tan, but you won't burn. Yeah. Apparently glass is a substance that absorbs UV radiation. This is a big thing that

I realized chucking. I just kind of touched upon it for my entire life. I thought that sunburn was like a tan gone too far, or conversely, that you got sun burned and then you got tanned as a result

of sun burn, and then you were fine. Oh yeah, like the people that are like, oh, always burn on day one and then it turns it turns into a tan, right, and then I keep that for the summer and I don't even need some block after that, right now, Actually, a sun tan and a sun burn are two different things, and then the result of two different types of UV radiation. Yeah, that people that say that stuff are completely talking out of their butts, right, Don't listen to them, listen to

us instead. Yeah, because there's actual signs behind the UVB is what causes sun burns. UV A rays are different, and they they are what ultimately I think it's a deeper penetration. They will ultimately cause like wrinkly skin, right and like internal collagen damage and stuff like that. Right. So uv A for aging, UVB for burning, right, yes, and combines with both. You look like that lady, And

there's something about Mary made out with the dog. So we are It's not like we're just complete, Um, we're just completely at the mercy of the sun. Right. We have a natural reactions to sunlight that are kind of protective measures, but really more than anything, we're finding nowadays that they're huge red flags that are meant to say, like, get out of the sun. You're being internally damaged on a molecular level right now, hence your sunburn. But it

turns out the tan is the same thing. Basically, it's a it's a big red flag or a big brown flag that says, um, you're undergoing genetic damage currently. You may want to get out of the sun, not go laid by the pools some more. You got your tan, you're fine. Yeah, when you're getting that tan, what that is is a pigment called melanin, and it is produced in reaction to that. Uh, I guess you v B u v A u v A and not gonna get

this v A ting right, should remember that? Yeah, but it's tough to it's tough to separate the burn from the tan and think that there are two different things. After thinking that they're you know, related to all your life, you know, well, it's It's why tanning beds use mainly u v A light because you don't want to. They don't want you to sunburn when you go to the tanning salon because then you'll be like, wait a minute, that's not how it's supposed to work. And you don't

get tann from UVB, so why even included? And if you don't have to, well, yeah, and here's the deal, though, I guess I might as well go ahead and let the cat out of the bag with the tanning beds. Um. One of the things, one of the bogus things that they will tell you is like, no, that your body needs vitamin D and so go to the tanning bed because it's safer than being in the sun. One bs. Uh, you get vitamin D from UVB, not uv A, and tanning beds use uv A to get you tanned, so

it's that's completely bogus to begin with. UM. One recent estimate UH suggested indoor channing caused about four hundred and twenty thousand cases of skins can't skin cancer United States every year. That's about double the number of lung cancer linked to smoking UH, and twelve states at this point of outlawed tanning beds for miners under eighteen years old. That seems smart. I got one more stat for you. People who used tanning beds for the first time before

the age of thirty UH, presuming they will. You know, it's not a one off, have a seventy increased risk in developing melanoma. The other don't go to tanning beds people. No, that's a creat advice, Chuck Man. I mean, and a lot of people also think, like melanoma nothing, you just cut it out, it's fine. Actually, melanoma can spread, can metastasize really quickly, and it is a very dangerous form

of cancer. So don't take that lightly at all. Plus, if you're going to a tanning bed, you're probably doing it for your looks. Have a little foresight because what you're doing is subjecting your body to advanced hyper aging. You're gonna age prematurely from and that whole like. You know, people will say, I don't care, I'm young. I want to look tann and look good. Um, that's why we have nanny states to choose for you, because you're too stupid to choose for yourself. Uh was that, judge, No,

we're trying to help people. I mean, this is it's a danger. So the guy with a freshly tanned face, let's let's go back to the skin and what the skin is doing. Okay, all right, should we take a break first, a little worked up? We can. All right, let's take a little break, get into the skin. So chuck, we're we're back on the skin. You said that when u v A interacts with our skin, melana sites are stimulated to produce melanin. Correct. Yeah, totally bailed on that.

And melanin is a pigment and one of the roles that it plays is to absorb but actually absorbs radiation u v A radiation and under normal circumstances, I think, um, literally nine times out of a thousand, it when it interacts with a photon of uv A radiation, it takes that photon and it basically absorbs it into its molecular structure and it spits it out as waste heat. So it takes the radiation and turns it into something that's just it's just heat. It's not deadly, it's not dangerous

any longer. Yeah, and that this isn't something that happens overnight. It takes a little while to produce this melanin, which is why you don't go out and get tan in a day. Um. There's a longstanding myth that people who have melanin production constantly, people with darker skin tones, um, that they can't burn and that they can't get skin cancer. And that's wrong on both accounts. It is um more difficult for somebody with very dark skin tone to get

some burned. But I was cancer right, Yeah, there's a lower prevalence. But I was reading, Um, I was reading up on it, and I saw some dermatologists said, if you have skin, you can get some burned. Just give it enough time, under the right conditions, you'll get some burned. And then yes, skin cancer is a thing as well. Um, people of Uh, the fairier complexion, the worst you're going to burn, and the um higher. Your incidence of getting skin cancer from being out in the sun is but

it can happen. It's just a spectrum. But on on the other end of the darkest end of the spectrum. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It just means it happens last. So all of this applies to people of all different skin tones. Yeah, and like we said before, when it comes to uv A that's a deeper penetrating light into the skin, it's gonna destroy collagen. It's a structural protein and that collagen goes away, and that's when your skin becomes less elastic, less smooth, and that is

what you think of when you think of wrinkles. Yeah, they found this University of Michigan study found that when the participants were exposed to uv A light, um something called matrix metallo proton as one was um produced, and that that goes and destroys collagen. It's like it's one of the body's natural processes breaking down these cell walls that gives skin structure, and that leads to wrinkles and

saggy skin eventually. And they found that even when you started to tan the um, the MMP one production didn't decrease at all. It just kept going. So this idea that when you developed a tan when you're melon in production kicks in that um you're being protected, that's actually not the case at all. We're finding that it's actually just it's a it's a defense mechanism, but it's not a protective measure that keeps everything fine once your tans set.

I looked up just a quadruple check about the base tan theory um and it's complete bs uh. They found that a base hand provides and we'll talk about SPF son uh protection factor. Right, you know why hesitant to less? Second there, a base hand provides an SPF of three or less, which means it buys you about ten extra minutes in the sun and so little that the chief of dermatologic surgery at Yale said it's essentially completely meaningless

in terms of providing protection. So and they in fact, they say it can have the reverse effect because people are under this assumption that a base hand helps, so they won't do the things you need to do, like where the hats or the UV shirts or the suntan or sunscreen, or stay out longer, and so it ends up being even worse for you because you think you

have this protective layer of brown. Yeah. That's one thing that um, that kept coming up in the research is that we have a lot of stuff to protect ourselves and it can be made better, and people are at work right now trying to improve the things that protect us from the sun, but that most people aren't using them right or don't understand the reality of the situation, which is Sun's gonna mess you up pretty good. All right, Well that's coming up in a sec Um. We've talked

about sun tan, right, so now let's talk about sunburn. Uh. Sunburn kind of simply put is literally cellular damage from ultra violet radiation. Uh. It's called um erythema or arithema. It's the reddening of the skin, and it is this delayed reddening of the skin caused by an increase of

blood flow to that area. Yeah. And the reason why you have increased blood flow to the area is because you've so damaged your skin on a molecular level that your immune response has been set off and blood is rushing to the area to bring in white blood cells and other helper immune cells to try to repair the damage you just did from letting yourself get a sunburned from uv B rays. And if you've ever had like a red, like to check and see if your sunburn. You look at your red skin, you touch it, it

turns white, then goes back red real quick. It turns white because you momentarily disrupt those capillaries and then they immediately go, no, we need to send blood there, and then the red just comes rushing back. And there's no worse feeling than a bad sunburned. No, it's pretty bad. It ruins your beach trip. If you get that thing on the first day, everybody gets mad at you. You're screwed. It's just no good. It's no good. It's no good. It doesn't turn to tan. I don't care who you are.

That is not science. That's a myth. It is a myth. So um, people like, now you don't know my skin it turns to dead, right, No, it doesn't. It's wrong. There is a lot of folklore surrounding sun tan and sunburns and stuff. Well, I think because people think they

just like, I know my body and my skin. It's like, no, there's science that supersedes all that, right, But I think the reason that there is so much myth and folklore around UM, sun tans and some burns is because science really kind of dropped the ball for a while and didn't really investigate this. There are only now starting to investigate it on a like a really legitimate level. Yeah, you know, it's a good point. So, I mean it's

kind of science is fault. Uh. And like you said before, any skin can get burned, Any part of the body can get burned, UM if it sees if the sunlight can touch it, even through clothing, which we'll talk about a bit later. To UM, you will get sunburned. Yeah, that's another too. You might think. While I'm wearing a shirt, most shirts, unless it's specifically designed to protect against UV radiation, is letting u V through UM. And as you can get burned, you can get tanned, you can get wrinkled,

you can cause cellular damage. UM, anytime UV radiation comes in contact with your skin. And from what I saw, the UVB radiation is the usually the likeliest culprit when you get skin cancer because it goes in there and directly knocks around d N A d NA, it turns out actually is pretty good at absorbing energy and releasing or absorbing radiation and releasing it as heat energy, just

like melanin is as well. But every once in a while it gets excited and it gets kind of knocked out of whack and some of its base pairs fused together, what we call a mutation. And if that base pair gets fused and isn't repaired, and it happens to be at a sight that say, expresses a protein that protects against tumors, well then you can get skin cancer. And

that's how it happens. And even though that happens, that the base pairs fused together and aren't repaired, out of maybe one out of every thousand times, that's one out of every thousand interactions with a photon. Think of how many photons are barreling down at you over a given minute of exposure to sunlight. The odds are against you. Agreed. Uh. And you know, since you mentioned the UV clothing or

SPF clothing, Ah, they are pretty great. Like most people I know now wear those shirts, Um, well they look cool. Well I wear one of those now because it's sort of three purposes, looks kind of cool. Um. I hate applying sunscreen, like all over my body. I'll hit my face and arms and stuff, but like getting putting all over my chest and belly and back and all. It's just I'm you're gonna miss spots and have weird streaks of sunburn here and there where you missed it, and

it's just no good. Uh. And then third, you know, when you have some extra pounds, it's like, well, if you wear the T shirt in the pool, everybody knows it's not a good look, but you can get away with the the SPF shirt. I think that is one reason why SPF shirts were adopted. Oh sure, yeah, yeah, but they really work great, um, and they dry super quick, like my skinny friends use them, you know. But it's good for fat dudes too. But they are rated up

to like fifty plus. The tighter the weave, the better. They say. To hold a shirt up to the light, like just a regular shirt will work. Like Denham, they said, it's one of the best things because it's such a tight weeks put on that Denham tuxedo and you're all set. Um. But a UPF rating they go from about fifteen to fifty. Uh. If you can hold it up to the light and

not see anything, the darker the better. It's like mine is like gray and black, and um, some of them or even have or even treated I think, yeah, that's what I thought. So some of them are just the weave is so tight, ye, sunlight light can't penetrate it. Just it's a physical barrier to the UVB. What do they treat some of them with? I'm not exactly sure.

That's the one thing that I'm kind of sketchy about because I don't love like I try to not use harmful chemicals as much as possible, So I don't know if those are like soaked in like carcinogenic. Probably not right, Yeah, probably not. It's probably magic dust of some story. But this woman who was uh I think she's a director of dermatology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, says that clothing is a single most effective form of sun protection, even more than sunscreen, kind of for the

reasons I mentioned. Because it's complete coverage. I've got a long sleeve one too, so um, it's just nice. I throw it on, don't have to worry about all the sunscreen junk, and then my legs. I usually don't get a ton of sun exposure to my legs, like I guess because you're usually vertical in a pool, like I don't lay around on a float. Uh, and it's underwater, Well, you you want to be careful, you v Radiation can

penetrate up to a foot underwater. Yeah, for sure. But I mean like, I don't wear any sunscreen on my legs, and you know I've got my pants off. Look at them I've got They're pretty white. I have um flip flap tan lines on my the tops of my feet. I kind of forgot about the tops of feet, dude. I am religious about putting sun block on the tops of my feet, and I still got tan lines. I saw a kid once, Um, his feet turned into like Fred Flintstone's feet because he got burned on the tops

of them. Except for those never happening to me, the whole foot. Well, they say the tops of feet like the tops of your ears and earlobes. Um, did you say the eyeballs can burn the back of the neck and those are some of the areas that are you're least likely or most likely to miss with sunscreen. But I did not mention eyeballs. Yes, your eyeballs can burn, can get sunburn. Yeah, I think I've experienced that after being in the sun all day, like my eyes just

sort of burning and irritated. I wonder if that's what that is. No, this is I think you would know? Yeah, like I think my eyes are going to die. Yeah, alright, should we take another break? Yeah, and then we'll come back with sunscreen. H all right. If we were on the way Back machine we traveled back to ancient Egypt, you might see people slapping oat brand on their skin or jasmine rice brand. What did I say? That was from the food fads episode The Dummy. Yeah, rice brand spreading. Uh,

I guess moist rice brand? Why not? Or jasmine? They're like, why not, it's BC let's party. Well, apparently jasmine is as good at repairing damage skin. I wonder if they tried jasmine rice oh many that Yeah, I would have been like onto something back then. So they did this back then, but actual sunscreen didn't come around until the turn of the century. Until the ninth early nine hundreds, thousands of years after the Egyptian dynasties were over, um,

there was a guy named Milton Blake. He was Australian and he came up with what is considered the first sun block in his kitchen apparently over like the course of twelve years. And they still make it in Australia and you really call it sun block back then, though it's probably more like son They call it a good first try. Yeah, he took him about twelve years of experimentation, but like you said, he finally uh again selling it

and is it? What's is the brand called Milton Blake that it was the one thing that I didn't look up. All right, Well, while you do that, I'll go to the nineteen forties, uh, to Switzerland. It was a swissman named Franz Garita who was a climber, and we mentioned snow um burns. Snow sun burns were pretty bad, and so he was I think he had ascended Mount Pitts on the Swiss Austrian border and got really burned. Is that Pitts Palau from Inglorious Bastards? Is that the same mountain? Oh?

I don't know, I don't I forgot about that part. But he got really burned and was like this is awful. So he came back and started work, uh and in six came up with the Pitts Boone Glacier cream uh. And this had an SPF of two, which um, like you said, good start. I don't even know if that qualifies as a good start. Well, it was probably more than Milton Blake's, don't you think. Or well, supposedly occasion people have a UM have a natural SPF of about three.

So this guy somehow managed to bring it down and not um. And then in Miami, Florida, there was a man named Benjamin Green. He was an airman and pharmacist and he was flying in World War Two and got a lot of sun up there, and so he uh developed something called he labeled red VET pet red veterinary PETROLATTAM, which I think is the same thing as petroleum. And I was surprised when I saw that he was an air and VET. I figured it meant like a veteran

of a war veterinary who knew uh. And then he would later add a little cocoa butter, little coca nut oil, and waila, you have copper tone. And then in nineteen fifty six they revealed the little copper Tone girl illustration and it became a household hit. I think actually helped sun block in general become a thing. By the nineteen sixties. Yeah, that little girl's name is Sherry Irwin, and she was the daughter of the woman who designed it. Yeah, the illustrator, right. Yeah.

Joyce Balantine in nineteen fifty nine used her own daughter as a model, and h Joyce Valentine on her own was very um, just sort of an anomaly at the time. She got a lot of work as a graphic artist in the nineteen fifties, and her daughter called her a maverick in that way, and that she was, you know, in the nineteen fifties, it was kind of tough for a lady to get that kind of high dollar work. And so that's off to you, Joyce Balentine, and Cherry's

still around. I can see that Joyce might be too. I saw a recent thing. Really this is ninety six. Yeah, she may be gone, but the art that she could totally be around. I mean, I forgot what you were was. I didn't catch the date on the article I read about her, but it's worth looking up. She's interesting. Um.

So yeah, coppertone took off. The nineteen sixties is when sun screens um kind of caught hold a little bit, but it wasn't until the late seventies until the FDA got involved and said, maybe we should like have some guidelines here. Yeah, which they did, and a lot of them didn't take some of them did. But one of the things that the FDA did when they got involved with UM sunscreen, especially in the U S, they're roundly criticized for basically being really slow oh at testing the

chemicals that are used. On the one hand, hats off for caring UM that the chemicals we put on our bodies aren't gonna kill us, but at the same time, hurry up. Apparently there's just a handful of chemicals that are in use as active ingredients in sunscreen in the United States, whereas Europe has something like eight I believe, and I guess Europe and Japan their sunscreen is way better than the stuff that we use here in the States. Yeah, and it's not because they're just willing elly about what

they'll allow. They've actually researched and more chemicals. Yeah. Typically the EU is pretty serious about when they clear chemicals. It's pretty safe. So how does sunscreen work? So, Chuck, here's how sunscreen works. For years and years and years and years and years up until the century it was it protected you from uvb only and even still there's plenty of sunscreens out that only protect you from UVB.

So if you want protection from UVB and UV A, which is what you want, you want to find one that's called broad spectrum sunscreen and it will say that they will champion that very clearly on the label. YEA. And if it's not on the label, it doesn't do anything to protect you from UVB. And so the whole, the whole, Yeah, UV A only UVB. So you'll get a tan, but you won't burn if you use it correctly. Yes,

you will just age right rapidly. So with UM, with sunscreen, you will see also on the label it will say SPF sun protection factor of fifteen or thirty or fifty or hundred. Apparently it goes up to a hundred and ten. Now, yeah, and there's a lot of controversy with that too, which we'll talk about. But with sunproof factor, this is how they determine, are you ready. They take the UM, they take the sun the sunscreen, and they put a little square on somebody's bottom and then they expose it to

UV radiation. And they used the bottom because that is the part of the body least likely to have gotten sun. Sure, it's like a blank slate, right without being a sexual organ. Well put yeah, because you don't want to test sun no, no uh. And then they'll they'll go to the other buttock and they will say, expose that to UV radiation, but it won't be treated as sunscreen. And we'll do this up again and again and again basically until you burn.

And then they will say, okay, well, um, what was the minimum dose for the untreated buttock and we're gonna take that and divide use that to divide the minimum dose of UV radiation for the treated buttock. And then that number is going to be SPF and we're gonna round down to the nearest five. And that's what some protection factor is. It's ultimately another way of saying what

percentage of the radiation from the sun this stuff blocks? Right, So if you get sunburned after ten minutes and the sun with nothing, if you put on SPF fifteen, you can be in the sun for about a hundred and fifty minutes without burning. Yeah, Because there's another way to you. There's a formula for taking SPF to figure out how it applies to you, and it is you take the um the number of minutes it takes you to burn, which who knows that? Do you know how long it

takes you to burn? This? This is the dumbest formula ever. How many minutes it takes you to burn times the number on the SPF and then that's how many minutes you can hang out outside without burning. That's that's what SPF means to you personally. Yeah, and here are the caveats, and there's a lot of them. One of them is when they do these studies, they apply way more than your average person does when they go to the wherever in this sign. Yeah, they're applying the amount you're supposed

to apply. Uh, I would say, just cut everything in half to be safe. That's probably pretty good. Like if you're like, I'm good with us the thirty maybe even by three quarters, because I saw a lot of people use between a quarter two a half of what you're supposed to use, right, and one reason they do well, the beginning application is already short changed. And then you need to reapply this stuff because even though they say sweatproof and waterproof, um, we all know that that isn't true.

Like throughout the day Supposedly, if you in the United States market. Something is water resistant or very water resistant. It has to last either forty or eighty minutes respectively in the water. Right, But even still they say when you get out, just immediately reapply sunscreen like you're starting from scratch again. You should. Yeah, and I don't do that either, Like you said, you don't know. It's it's

my great failing in life. That's one of mine, for sure. Uh. Well, and we'll we'll get back to application here in a minute. But I don't think we ever said for sure how this stuff works. They work in a couple of different ways. One of two ways. Uh. They form a barrier, either absorbing or reflecting. So it's either a chemical filter or literally physically blocking these UV rays. Yeah, and forever and still apparently today. Zinc oxide is the main mineral that's

used as a physical blocker blocker. It reflects the song, and it doesn't It just bounces right off of it. Yeah. Like if you put zinc oxide on your face, you're golden um. It is a gross, greasy, white and mess that's seemingly impossible to absorb. Um. But if you don't care what you look like, or ironically, if you do care what you look like, uh in the long term,

but don't care in the short term. That's what you should be using on your face for you like having a nose, Yes, you should put sync oxide on it. So that's that's a physical barrier. What the chemical filters do, um they act like a synthetic melanin where they take the UV radiation, absorb it, and then turn it into waste heat energy. They don't allow it to penetrate the skin. It's amazing. That's what sun screen is. It's a it's

a it's you're covering your body. You're putting it in between the sun and your body so that the sun's radiation can't penetrate through it to your skin beneath it. It's amazing that they came up with that. Yeah, it's pretty cool, especially considering the Egyptians had an idea of what was going on here. Yeah. Uh so we mentioned you know that. I think you said they go up to what now, one tin? That's the highest I saw. So the controversy there is is basically it doesn't it's

not an exponential growth anything over thirty. They just consider the D plus because if you wear something that's a one tin, it's not like, well, then that's you know, four times almost as much as a thirty. It doesn't work that way. No. And supposedly, if you if you burn in ten minutes, right, and you are say, using a seventy, you should be able to sit out in

the sun for seven hundred minutes without without getting a burn. Technically, if everything was a hundred percent right, that that may be true, but that it never works out that way in practice, So just throw out that idea altogether, right. Um, And like you said, the FDA wanted it to just be thirty plus because at thirty, an SPF of thirty blocks point seven percent of the sun's harmful rays, right, Um, fifty though only blocks and a hundred blocks. Yeah, block

is better than blocking seven percent. But if you are sitting there just going by the SPF number, and you're using a thirty, and then you think, well, if I use a hundred, I can just put it on once and stay out all day. Um, that's where the problem lies. It gives a false sense of security where you shouldn't have security. And so that the FDA was saying, everybody just used thirty and use it correctly and reapply it

a lot. I think what we use in our family is generally the seventy and then we also have the straight up zinc oxide. Oh you do, huh yeah, And I don't. I don't care what I look like anymore. Have my pants off. I've got I've got one of those like big wide brim like floppy fishing hats and like camo with like the neck thing and everything, like the jungle hat, like the jungle. I. Emily wears a big straw hat because she just had a little skin

cancer removed from her temple. Oh no, she all right, Yeah, she's good. They got it, and you know she's gonna keep going back. But everything looks like in most cases it is a little minor thing, you know. Um, but she's like hardcore now and she always has been hardcore about sunscreen for a while, but now it's that and a hat. Yeah. And I wear my my trusty pith helmet. A pith helmet, Yeah, a pith helmet, A pith helmet. I wore it became I got it before I think

my first or not my first, only one. I've been to Newport Folk Festival. Um, because they're great, they're comfortable, they breathe, uh, they block out the sun. I think they're super cool because you know, I'm the only guy around with the pith helmet on. I'm easy to spot in the crowd. Pith helmet and a UV shirt and no pants, milk bottle white calves. No, well, yeah, it's about right. That's if you see me at the pool, that's me Ray bands, pith helmet, V shirt. Well it's

another one too. Like, even if you don't like wearing sunglasses ts, you need to be wearing sunglasses and ones that polarize. I feel like I'm going to die if I don't wear sunglasses outside. Yeah, me too. I hate bright light like it hurts, and I wear them a lot inside. Like I know it's obnoxious, but in uh, like bright spaces and airports and grocery stores a lot of times I'll wear my sungla It's a statement. I just I don't know, man, I don't like bright light.

I hate it. So, um, do you lay out in the sunlight? No, okay, I don't either. No no, no, like it's always in the shape for me. No, Like I'll like I don't lay out or at all. But I mean, if you're like hanging out by a pool or something. I'm almost always in the water. Okay, I'm always under the I'll jump in the water to cool off, but then I'm underneath like an umbrella the rest of the time. What do you like, Read a book, listen to music. Yeah, I'm almost always in the water because

it's so god awful hot for me in my sweatiness. Um, but the pool is just my best friend. Yeah, it's nice. And I'm generally like neck deep, not much exposed. So yeah, about a foot down, run about to your nipples. Yeah you're safe. Yeah, nipples up. You gotta be careful, chuck, or I'll get one of those uh noodles boom noodles, and I just saddle it up, straddle it and a good a thick noodle keeps me at about mid chest level and I can live with that, and I'll just

bob up and down for hours. Have you seen they have like these kind of nettings that you can run a noodle through. You you like it. The reason I don't like mine is because it doesn't fit the big noodle. It fits the thinner noodle, And so I found out had to do a little work to keep my chin up. Yeah, you don't want to work a little. The kicking. It's okay every now and then, but I had to kind of constantly kick to keep my neck up, and I like to just be either chest high or neck hind water.

That's my recipe. Um. I don't think we mentioned how much you're supposed to use. No mean we should. You're supposed to use for an average adult body. Whatever the heck. That means. Um, about a shot glass size about an ounce of sunscreen on your body and about a nickel size him out for your face and neck. Right, So you put that on fifteen to thirty minutes before you go outside to let it absorb and do its work. Yeah,

a lot of people don't do that. Um, once you start to sweat, once you get in the pool, which is when I start thinking about going outside. Right, you want to reapply, you want to keep up with reapplying, and um, you want to wear a hat broad spectrum and you want broad spectrum, don't mess around. Get broad spectrum. High SPF, get as high n SPF as you want. It will block more percentage of the rays. It will just Um, you just don't put your full faith in it. Yeah,

don't do the formula. Just throw the formula out go highest PF broad spectrum, reapply and and don't forget some areas of your feet, like your ears and stuff. And they also said this is good advice their number one thing. Where'd you get this? Actually? Do you remember all over which which part? The one through five tips? I think that was from how Stuff Works? Okay, Um, it says

know thyself. So if you're super white, red headed Irish person ladder last and you know you've been dealing with this your whole life, you don't have to be told. But you burned super easy, you might want to use more, reapply more often, or if you have a prevalence of skin cancer in your family, you might want to take that into consideration for anything else. Uh I do. I got one more thing, just on the spray versus the cream. All these sprays are the rage now you know, but

I'm you're super easy. The wind well, yeah, sure, the wind is a factory and think about that. Uh. They are very convenient, but Consumer Reports says, don't use them on your kids because inhaling the fumes is no good. Um. And you can tell you get a mouthful that you're like. Um. Basically, what it comes down to is. The upside is is that if you are more likely to use the spray than nothing, then use the spray. If if the convenience is what makes the difference, then go wild with it.

Don't use it on your kids, don't use it on your face ever. Rub it in, you know, spray then rub it in. You're not supposed to use it on your face. Yeah, they say don't spray it on your face. I mean the spray in your face sometimes. Um, And it says how how long you apply it makes a difference. So if you just spray for two to three seconds, you're getting you're not get enough. Oh yeah, you definitely don't want to do it on your face then, so

they definitely side with creams is better. But if you just won't use anything because you hate the cream, then use the spray. Yeah, it's good advice. One day we're gonna have some perfect sunscreen that does the trick and everybody's gonna know how to use it just right, and everything will be great, just in time for this climate change thing too. Yeah. If you want to know more about sunscreen, sun block, sun tanned sun lotion, everything, I don't think you could know more about it. Yeah, just

go to sleep. Go to sleep and let this gel and you will know everything there is to know. And since I said jel, it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this. Oh. This is one where I get to chime in on something in real time. Hey guys, my name is Rebecca Chan, and first I'd like to say I love your show. By listening to it, I impress people with my knowledge of random things. It's a good start, Rebecca. I wanted to write in about your

episode on election laws and voter fraud. You mentioned early voting, and this reminded me of the time I got into an argument online with someone about it. Well, no, people argued online I really like early voting, but this person said they disagreed with it and wish it would be taken away because they felt it was disrespectful to not go on actual election day, seeing they did not think people who went to vote early actually cared about elections.

This was surprising to me because I only thought of early voting as an alternate, more convenient way to vote. Then again, maybe I'm just a stupid millennial who buys too much avocado toast. What are you? She burned herself? What are your thoughts on early voting being disrespectful to elections from Rebecca Chan Rebecca, We're most likely apt to say to each his own, but I will say that

that person is stupid. That makes zero sense. It's not like shooting fireworks off the day before the fourth the July. You know, like, if you can vote earlier, vote earlier. Being disrespectful to an election day by voting early is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. It's pretty ridiculous. So whoever said that on the internet is not interneting correctly. Nice, pretty good. Chuck shut that down and hats off to Rebeccaford just being genuinely puzzled by it rather than like

you're an idiot. Yeah. Uh. If you want to get in touch with us, like Rebecca did, you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email the Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at a home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics, is it how Stuff Works dot com