April
Recent raised awareness of the dangers of skin cancer has also seen an equally rapid rise in the use of sunscreen. We’re warned of the dangers of exposure to the sun without adequate layers of sunscreen on exposed skin. Melanoma is a serious skin cancer and it affects tens of thousands of people each year.
To protect us against the risk of skin cancer, we’re taught to use lots of sunscreen to help block out damaging rays from the sun. So while we’re all using more and more sunscreen, the incidence of skin cancer is still rising.
When you’ve spent an entire day covered in sunscreen, your first impulse is to wash it off at the end of the day. It’s spent all day being absorbed into your skin and it finishes being flushed down the drain and sent out into our water system.
Unfortunately, the very product we use to protect us might also be poisoning our environment and ourselves at the same time.
The list of ingredients in many sunscreen products is a little scary when you consider the chemical compounds we’re smearing onto our skins in an attempt to avoid skin cancer.
Inside most sunscreens is the ingredient Aminobenzoic Acid, which is a potential carcinogen and is possibly linked to cardiovascular disease. Both Avobenzone and Ecamsule are also possible carcinogens found in many sunscreens.
Considering sunscreen is designed to be applied to your skin where it remains for long periods of time, it’s surprising to find chemicals such as Cinoxate and Dioxybenzone, which are known to show evidence of skin toxicity.
There is strong evidence that Dioxybenzone could be a possible carcinogen and is known to be a hormone disruptor, yet it’s found in many sunscreen brands. When you add Diazolidinyl urea to your sunscreen lotion, you’re adding another possible carcinogen that affected the nervous system and the immune system.
So in our efforts to protect ourselves against skin cancer, we cover our skin with a chemical cocktail of potential carcinogens that can negatively affect our nervous system, immune system and even cause infertility. We allow it to absorb into our skin for several hours before we rinse off these chemicals and allow them to flush down the drain into our environment.
Could we possibly be protecting against one form of cancer while we’re inadvertently increasing our risk of contracting another form?
Homemade Sunscreen
There are several easy recipes available for making your own sunscreen that not only hydrates your skin, but also helps to protect you from harmful UVA and UVB rays from the sun.
Most recipes are made using a vegetable oil base. The primary benefit of making your own sunscreen is that you know what’s in the mixture. The resultant cream you produce is non-toxic to you and it’s safer for the environment as a whole. You know that you’re not polluting and poisoning the environment when you rinse your skin at the end of the day.
Photo by: Christian Wheatley -
Fotolia.com
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Yea, I’m gonna go make my own sunscreen….
Could you provide the recipes, or a link to them, that you reference in the article?
My parents ended up with basal cancer on their faces due to years of sun exposure from camping and hiking. So, my sister and I stopped sun exposure but we both ended up with Vit D problems. I still ended up with sun damage on my face. Find a happy medium and be careful between 10 am and 2 pm.
Would b nice to know which homemade recipes are recomended and how they were tested. Interesting article.
got any links to homemade recipes you might recommend?
Hi there, very good article and also interesting for all the people that buys everything without paying attention to the labels. Specifically the Aminobenzoic Acid it has been determined that it increases the formation of a particular DNA defect in human cells, then increasing the risk of skin cancer.
I like this article and speaking of making a homemade sunscreen, I found this recipe without all that numerous list of chemicals that don’t make any good thing for your skin, it’s made of naturals oils, so checked out!!!
http://skincare.lovetoknow.com/Homemade_Sunscreen
For the people asking for homemade sunscreen recipes you can enjoy this URLs:
http://www.vivawoman.net/2008/08/14/homemade-natural-sunscreen-anyone/
http://www.a1-natural-beauty.com/Sunscreen_Lotion.html
http://skincare.lovetoknow.com/Homemade_Sunscreen
http://www.mothering.com/discussions/showthread.php?t=603356
http://yoursunblockguide.com/Making+Your+Own+Sunscreen+Formula+.2382.htm
Thanks for people comments, If you have some other urls to leave, is welcome
And remember, whatever you use, never exposure your skin too much hours down the sun.
Wow, great: I have an albino child who is very sensitive to the sun. It would be great to use homemade sunscreen. I’m sure it’ll work better than anything the scientists and their chemicals can come up with because it’s natural.
Hi, good post. I have been thinking about this issue,so thanks for posting. I will certainly be coming back to your posts.
I think you’re damned if you do and if you don’t. The sun will burn your skin and possibly give you skin cancer. Some chemicals in sunscreen may be harmful and the physical blocks (Ti & Zn) are been nanosized and possibly dangerous.
I believe if you want to go out in the sun and enjoy the world, you should be protected. You have to find a low hazard product that you enjoy and feels good on your skin.
Please check out http://www.kinesys.com as an option for those who don’t like sunscreen. we call it the sunscreen for people who hate sunscreen.
Thank you,
Jeff
True. Even many sunscreens you find at places like Whole Foods have Titanium Dioxide & Oxybenzone. The only safe one I’ve found is http://yourorglife.mionegroup.com/en/product/13430.
There is nothing in it to harm you. It contains certified organic ingredients and is certified by the Biological Farmers of Australia. To see a video with more information about the harmful ingredients in many “natural” sunscreens & the ingredients & benefits in this one go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVOl7bQJtWU
I’ve been using sunscreen for over 5 yeas now. So what you are telling me is scary and disturbing. What are we supose to use to protect ourselves from the sun then? I got upset and just put away all my sunscreens which had those ingredients you mention.
Great article…..thanks for sharing the information! What we decided to do for my daughter is use non-toxic sunscreen when she is going to be outside for longer than ONE hour or in late afternoon. If she is only going to be outside for approx. a 1/2 hour during the cooler parts of the day we do not put sunscreen on. That way she always gets the appropriate amount of Vitamin D.
Thank you again for the great article…
Be Well,
Michelle