Scientist Reacts: Sunscreen is a LIE?! (Style Theory)

I decided to opt for four straight  days using a mix of their fastest bed which had a 70/30 divide and  the instant bed with its 50/50 He said he read up on tanning beds! He's wearing mayonnaise! I'm Michelle I'm a chemistry PhD cosmetic  chemist and sunscreen science nerd Style Theory recently did a  video called Sunscreen is a LIE?! where they basically try to do one of  those tests you see on TikTok where people put sunscreens on themselves to test them but more scientific ish a bunch of peop

le asked me to react to it and  it's a really interesting concept so I'm going to make it a lot less fun by commenting on  it from a sunscreen science point of view I'm sure we all have at least one person  in our life who just doesn't believe in sunscreen my mom for instance famously  doesn't think that sunscreen works and her upgrading to an SPF 8 was a  huge moment in her character arc but she's certainly not alone in thinking that according to one study 11% of  Americans wear sunscreen every

day but a whopping 46% never wear sunscreen at all of course making your own choice to  not wear sunscreen is one thing but it becomes entirely different when you  start telling others to follow your lead first off I'm so happy to see someone  with a big platform outside of that skincare and health social media space  take on all this anti-sunscreen BS it is a huge problem sunscreen is a really  well demonstrated way to protect your skin against UV from the sun which leads  to skin cancer accel

erated skin damage it even counts as personal protective  equipment for people working in the sun obviously there are a lot of science  communicators in health and skincare spending time debunking a lot of these  myths around sunscreen everywhere but algorithms tend to feed you more info  that you already are looking at so it can be really hard to reach people  outside of that bubble sometimes even in Australia which is the  skin cancer capital of the world there was this Cancer Council  survey

that showed that in 2019 this was done in January which is like the  middle of summer when everyone is just roasting only 37% of people wore SPF 30  sunscreen the previous weekend 12% used no sun protection which includes things like hats sunglasses sunscreen and  also like long pants and long tops 21% got sunburned that is one-fifth of people and yeah this is a country where  two out of three people get skin cancer by the age of 70 and everyone knows  someone who's had a chunk of skin cut out m

y primary school principal he  came back to school once and he had like I think it was a chunk of  ear attached to his nose or vice versa so yeah it is really really scary that we have  so much awareness of this everyone literally knows someone and yet people are just not taking  these really easy steps to protect themselves I kind of get where they're coming from looking across these videos the  overwhelming complaint stems from the large quantity of hard to pronounce chemicals that are put int

o our sunscreens that  are foreign to the average consumer specifically octocrylene and avobenzone here's the thing though both of  those have been approved for use by both the FDA and the European  commission as being safe to use again I really respect that Style Theory are  going outside of their niche to take on this topic it takes so much less research and  education and just critical thinking to make fear-mongering videos that appeal  to people's sense of like stranger danger and natural is

better with these  hard to pronounce chemical names A lot of the time debunking this feels like  you're trying to stop a flood with a cup I also wanted to point out that a lot of  these chemical sunscreens aren't actually used anymore I think the last time I saw a  sunscreen with Padimate O in it was the 90s there's about 11 commonly used chemical sunscreens  in the US and all of those are also approved in the EU including oxybenzone which is another  ingredient that people tend to freak out ab

out and a lot of that freaking out is pushed  by organizations like the environmental working group who release this really  fear-mongery sunscreen "report" every year it's a massive problem in addition while a recent study did  find that there is some absorption of these and other sunscreen ingredients  into the bloodstream after application the study also directly pointed out  and I quote these findings do not indicate that individuals should  refrain from the use of sunscreen yeah this study

that they show here is used by  a lot of people to fearmonger about sunscreens it's by the FDA and I wrote a  couple of blog posts about it it's actually been known for quite a long time  that you can find traces of sunscreen in blood there were some pretty well-known  studies in the late 90s the FDA regulates sunscreens in a kind of rigid way which is why these studies were  done and presented the way they are other countries have taken  this sunscreen absorption into blood into account when lo

oking  at their safety for quite a long time I did this video going through the EU's recent  safety assessment for oxybenzone a while back basically we are just really good at  detecting tiny tiny amounts of stuff in blood now or in anything really  so just because we can detect it doesn't mean it's at a high enough  level to actually have any impact no the real threat that sunscreen seems to pose  is less directed at us and more at marine wildlife according to the National Park Service 14 000 

tons of sunscreen enter coral reefs every year coral reefs are super important  to the health of marine organisms often serving as the literal home  for hundreds of aquatic friendos they don't call coral reefs the  rainforests of the ocean for nothing there's now an outcry from environmental sciences that some of the ingredients in sunscreen  are damaging the already fragile ecosystem the concern for coral has actually become  so widespread that the state of Hawaii began banning sunscreen that c

ontained  the chemicals linked to coral damage as a result sunscreen manufacturers are  rushing to try and find Alternatives that are compliant with regulations using more  natural minerals like zinc oxide this is only over the Internet so I understand why  people think this but it's not correct the scientific evidence doesn't Point towards  sunscreens being a big issue for coral reefs so Story Time with Michelle so back in 2015 there was this  paper published with a lot of fanfare about how sun

screen was killing coral basically what the scientists did in this study  was they had coral and then they put sunscreen in it and they looked at what concentration  of sunscreen would start harming coral then they went to Hawaii and went to  some areas near coral reefs they took some water samples and measured the  concentrations of sunscreen in them and they found that those concentrations were  higher than the amount needed to harm coral so it seems like a pretty  straightforward conclusion n

ow all of these headlines were from the day the paper was published and  this isn't even all of them this is a really unusual amount of coverage  for a paper that was published on the same day so it turns out that the press release was sent  out before the paper was actually available it was embargoed until like one minute after  midnight on the day the paper was published this is something called science by press release basically there is just no way that  any of these reporters actually read

the study critically or asked for  commentary from other coral scientists they would have just relied  on what the press release said and this is a big problem because there  were a lot of issues with the paper some of their numbers were based off like a single sample of ocean water  that was less than half a cup they also tested the coral  with DMSO which is like a chemical that makes corals just like suck stuff in so after all of this press  attention there were some coral scientists who gave

more sensible opinions I did a video in 2018 about it and  in 2021 some scientists published papers where they showed that they  couldn't replicate their measurements finally in August 2022 there was this like 400  page report released by the national academies it was written by this committee that  had some of the top coral scientists who went over all of the data on the  environmental impacts of sunscreen basically the evidence doesn't point  towards sunscreen having much of an impact on coral

reefs especially when you're  comparing it with stuff like climate change if it is an issue then it does  doesn't seem to be a widespread issue around the world the most bleached coral  doesn't match where there's the most sunscreen so these bans weren't really  based on solid scientific evidence and there's a lot of concern that these  bans could actually increase skin cancer most people don't like the feel of  zinc oxide sunscreens they're not really wearable for people with darker skin tones

I actually got invited to do a talk for  the Hawaiian Dermatological Society about sunscreen because they were worried about  this that's why I have these slides prepared also if sunscreen was an issue  zinc oxide isn't necessarily a more environmentally friendly alternative that report shows that chemical and  physical sunscreens completely overlap in terms of their environmental impacts zinc  is actually classified as an aquatic pollutant anyway that outcry over chemical sunscreens  destroyin

g coral reefs is not a majority opinion it just seems that way because  it was the first narrative that took hold and really annoyingly there  are sources that look legit like the NOAA they have a page that says  their sunscreens are killing coral reefs the national academies report actually  specifically points out this page as an example of something that makes  it really confusing for consumers so on one hand we have science  telling us that sunscreen use is both safe and necessary for human 

bodies but at the same time we have evidence that suggests that it might  be damaging our aquatic ecosystems and then you have the whole other crew of people  saying that they use natural solutions instead I never use cancer cream whenever I'm in the  sun I use organic coconut oil to hydrate my skin yeah that is a terrible idea UV isn't dehydrating your skin it's doing deeper permanent damage to your skin  cells your DNA your collagen also I'm pretty sure that guy is the same guy who just said

you can't pronounce these  chemicals therefore they're scary and it's like that is a you issue that is you should learn to read better also I don't think he's ever tried looking at like plant names because plant  names have the worst names they're like weird and Latin at least in chemistry is systematic it's  like once you learn how to pronounce root words you can jam them together  it's not awful like plant names I really hate plant names but gotta say he didn't use the control and the  sunscre

ens were all different and I just started to internally scream as I saw that experimental  design and it going super viral hence this video do sunscreens actually work? are there safer alternatives? do the online hacks work? does SPF matter? I wanted to test it all so we designed and then redesigned and  then redesigned a third time a scientific experiment that would finally answer  all of our questions about sunscreen and we have the answers let me tell you  they're far from the answers that I

expected I really relate to this a lot of the  experiments I see on TikTok are just bad so like testing stuff with ph strips  when pH doesn't actually matter looking at things through UV  cameras and like "proving stuff" there was like a brand that was  spreading sunscreen on toast experimental design is one of those basic  things we learn in science to try to make sure that a test is fair so I think it'll be really  interesting to see how he does it differently at first we thought that this one

was going to  be easy just buy a bunch of sunscreen and lay out the balmy North Carolina Sun for two  hours exactly like Tyler did for his test but unlike Tyler we were a bit more  careful about how we chose our sunscreens to make sure our results were as  reliable as possible we got a low medium and high SPF in each of three  different popular consumer brands Banana Boat Sun Bum and Neutrogena we  even did our best to ensure that spfs were consistent across those brands 35 50 and 70 we also wa

nted two extremes an  extreme high and an extreme low that got us a four in Hawaiian  Tropic and a hundred in Banana Boat and that's not all we also  wanted to test price point with more expensive or fancier brands  of sunscreen perform any differently I think this approach makes a lot of sense in science you do generally  want to control the variables but one piece of background info  that I feel like he might already already know and he is maybe not telling  us maybe he'll talk about it later

that SPF number on the bottle of any sunscreen actually comes from this really  strictly controlled experiment every sunscreen formula has to get applied to human volunteers and then  tested for their UV protection the method is really finicky it's been developed and redeveloped over decades in most of the rest of the world  it's called the iso method 24444 the US uses the FDA method which  is just a little bit different and you can actually test different formulas of sunscreen with it because i

t's  standardized based on weight it's two milligrams per square centimeter but that info is not going to make  it as interesting a story for a video but I'm still really interested to see how he  goes through developing his test because this is exactly how scientists would have started thinking  about how to test sunscreens back in the day it's like the first steps towards getting  this super refined standardized test so I think it'll be really interesting  to see what problems he runs into and

compare how he solves them to how they've  managed to solve them in the proper SPF test and hoo boy I knew that Sephora  was going to have that expensive stuff but I was not prepared for the  insanity that was their pricing logic this one costs less than this guy  right here it has a higher SPF it works longer 80 minutes versus  40 minutes so double the time yeah but this is a gel so there's a  high premium put on sunscreens that don't show up on your skin they don't  leave like a white sheen o

n your face or on your skin so that you can just  be dewy and so this one is a gel and it's supposed to specifically go on sheer  and totally scentless on all skin types hey fun fact turns out you can get away with charging double the price for something that's less  protective but is clear and odorless score I can see where he's coming from but this is  legitimately a problem for a lot of people especially people with darker skin and especially  if they want to wear sunscreen on a daily basis a

nd not just like at the beach or the pool where  you don't really care as much what you look like the World Health Organization does  recommend wearing sunscreen when the UV index is three or over and darker skinned  people do have a lot more protection against skin cancer and sun-induced wrinkles but  UV also messes up pigment producing cells that means you end up with uneven pigment  and a lot of people don't like that also there is a practical protection  aspect for nicer feeling sunscreens s

tudies have found that people will apply more  of a nicer sunscreen and that matters because you'll have more molecules of sunscreen  on your skin waiting there to absorb UV but there is definitely some  pricing shenanigans going on here brands can charge more for face products  and that test for SPF is the same so if you find a body sunscreen that you like wearing on your face you can  totally go ahead and use it but brands do tend to put more of their lighter  feeling skin smoothing tech in th

e face products we also learned that luxury brands aren't immune from using wacky gimmicks  to sell their effectiveness it has something called wet force  and something called heat force oh man wet force and heat force it's like the Power Rangers of sunscreen we are definitely paying Power Ranger prices again I get where they're coming from  but Shiseido are a legit company who hire scientists and they invest in actual scientific  research which is less common than you would hope brands do use a

lot of wacky marketing  names for legit science and honestly I think a big part of it is that  they underestimate our intelligence wet force is their name for this tech they use  where the UV protection actually goes up when sunscreen comes in contact with water  and sweat which is not usually the case heat force is similar except with heat and just when you thought it  was impossible to rub any more substances into my body we wanted to  test some of the anti-sunscreen hacks we went with the co

conut oil but  we also tried avocado because we saw that come up in a lot of Internet blogs  and lastly we tried mayonnaise for the memes I don't know if they controlled this and  just didn't mention it but one thing that is super important for getting reliable  sunscreen tests is the amount that you use in the proper SPF test they use two  milligrams per square centimeter and that's where all those like teaspoon  and shot glass recommendations come from and that is super important because  suns

creen is kind of like paint so paint tries to block out like light  from hitting whatever's underneath so that it doesn't interact  with it and become visible so if you don't have like enough paint particles or paint molecules then you  can see the thing underneath it's the same idea with sunscreen sunscreen is essentially trying to hide your skin  from the sun to stop that UV from getting through in the actual SPF test they're also really careful about how they apply to get that  layer of sunsc

reen really even they usually do some SPF estimates  on slides first and there's like the special robot they get to spread  it out more evenly and it's called the spreadmaster it was time to analyze our  results I was dumbfounded because scientifically this didn't make any sense my best guess here is that all the sweat  on my back might have contaminated the test results mixing into an unholy soup of lotion that  protected my back but ultimately burned the data we also realized that there  was a

n issue with the sun while I stayed perfectly still all the sun you know moved which created an  uneven toasting across my back that left us with too many major problems to solve how do you control the sun and your own sweat alright so they've talked about the  results that was a really long segment so I'm probably going to edit that down but  yeah those are two of the big issues that are solved with the proper sunscreen test  with something called a solar simulator this is basically like a lamp

that's  really carefully designed to produce the same wavelengths of UV as  the sun so you don't need to deal with the sun moving around  and shadows and all of that stuff it also means that they can focus the  light onto like really really small circles on the person's back and it limits  the skin damage on the rest of the person and that also controls the sweat because it's  like a lot less hot for people lying around we decided to change up the experiment a bit when you can't have the sun co

me to  you why don't you go to the Sun the suntan city that is baby the thought process here was that we  would be able to get a consistent even tan across every square inch of my  body all while not sweating because the beds are equipped with fans and  things designed to keep you cool the beds are also more time efficient according to the workers there 12 minutes in some of these beds is the equivalent  to three hours of sun exposure so if we you really wanted to  test how sunscreen works under

extended intense sun exposure this was gonna be it tanning beds are so bad please  do not try this on yourself Australia actually banned tanning beds  about 10 years ago because there are a whole bunch of horrifying stats on what  happens with like just one tanning session anyone who was in Australia at the time who wasn't like a fetus will remember this  because it was like everywhere there was all this public debate I think we all know that tanning beds aren't  great but it is so much worse t

han I thought so more people develop skin cancer because of indoor tanning than develop lung  cancer because of smoking those who have ever tanned indoors have an  83% increased risk of developing squamous cell carcinoma that's one type of skin cancer and a 29% increased risk of developing  basal cell carcinoma another type any use of a tanning bed before age 35 is associated with a 75%  increase in risk for melanoma and yeah that's because turning beds do  have super intense UV but tanning beds

are also designed so that you burn  less so that you can tan for longer burning is mostly from shorter  wavelengths of UV called UVB so that means that these tanning  beds have a lot more UVA than UVB and UVA is bad because it seems to have a big  role in triggering melanoma so on top of the risk of the tanning beds this is also not a good way to  test how well a sunscreen protects against burning because they purposely got rid of a lot of those burning wavelengths so you  have to get longer ex

posure you have to get a lot more  UVA to get the same result I'm really hoping that he came across these stats before he did this so he doesn't  end up using the bed that much you see the tanning salon really threw me for a loop when they started to talk about  the four different bed types and how they each had different mixtures of  UV light which made me finally realize hey maybe I should have done some more research before jumping into this experiment  which is exactly what I finally did oka

y so maybe he didn't see those  tanning bed stats the first time but now he will and he's only had  five minutes in there so it's okay I was not expecting to be  this stressed about this video you guys told me this would be fun I don't know if there are any other Australians watching this but there was this  ad about 10 years ago and it said tanning is skin cells in trauma tanning is skin cells in trauma and it's got these like animations  of melanoma cells like going into your blood and going t

o your  brain and going to your lungs it's this really scary ad and I feel like every  Australian has this burned into their brains it's almost like you know the forest fire  meme that people in the US talk about like I say this to my friend Hannah all the time tanning is skin cells in trauma like they show the melanoma and it looks  like mud going into the thing this is YouTube so I could  just like show you the video I'll just show you the video yeah so like UV is bad but then what is sunscree

n supposed to do well that ultimately depends on the type chemical sunscreens your typical lotions  and sprays are absorbed into the skin and act as another line of defense to  absorb UV light just like melanin does on the other hand mineral sunscreens like  zinc oxide sit on top of the skin acting as a shield reflecting UV light back into the  world before it can penetrate into your skin no all right this is an easy mistake  to make because it is literally everywhere even on the American  Acade

my of Dermatology website I actually recently published a scientific article with some dermatologists about  this myth and why it's a problem it mistakenly leads some people into  believing that mineral sunscreens will work better but in reality mineral sunscreens  mostly work just by absorbing UV like chemical sunscreens and only about five percent  of the protection comes from reflection and both of them mostly sit on top of  the skin or just like in the very top few layers of dead skin cells

so the UV ends  up gone before it gets to those living cells in either case sunscreen gives your melanocytes just enough time to produce the melanin  needed to protect your skin from damage if you forget to apply sunscreen or  if you stay out for too long your skin becomes overwhelmed and that UV radiation  starts to literally destroy your skin cells this isn't quite right so when the sun hits  your skin the melanin pigment that's already in your skin oxidizes and darkens and kind of  spreads ou

t a bit and gives some protection but you don't get an increase in the melanin yet so this immediate effect mostly comes from UVA  and about three days later then the melanocytes start producing extra melanin to give a longer  lasting tan and that is mostly a UVB effect but a suntan still only gives you  about SPF three or four protection so it still lets in a third to a quarter of  the UV with both of these effects combined this is also why tanning beds are  extra crap because they don't give m

uch of a protective tan because  they are so heavy on that UVA one study found that they only got SPF 1.2  ish after about like 10 tanning bed sessions so tanning is pretty much your body trying  to protect itself in a pretty imperfect way and even amounts of UV that don't burn your skin can damage your DNA which is in that  tanning is skin cells in trauma video and you haven't even started to burn yet they should really just rerun this  ad because that is just so good and you see it's this bala

nce of  UVA and UVB that I hadn't really considered when I first got to the tanning salon different beds with their different  bulb makeups all deliver different relative amounts of these two lights with beds  ranging from the basic model and a 90/10 UVA to UVB split all the way up to the instant  beds with the skin crackling 50/50 split so for our experiment I decided to  opt for four straight days using a mix of their fastest bed which had a 70 30  divide and the instant bed with its 50 50 he

said he read up on tanning beds he's wearing mayonnaise I hope he's never ever had  any relatives with skin cancer there is like a big genetic component to it like maybe he's mixed race maybe  he's not like completely white ethnicity: Caucasian maybe the internet's wrong he's a YouTuber so he probably lives in  a cave like the rest of the time right am I in like the denial or bargaining phase here oh my God this is really stressful so I mean it seems pretty definitive  as far as where I'm standi

ng this is your control right here pretty obviously everything around it  not tan and not red and angry at me so it says that suntan lotion  is clearly doing something honestly I think what I'm  most surprised by with this is every square worked which is shocking to me this one right here this is the 7 SPF literally nothing unchanged fantastic I don't know if that's really unchanged to me I don't know if it's the camera  but it looks a little bit reddish in actual SPF testing they're looking for

the slightest bit of reddening it's  called the minimal erythemal dose they have specially trained people who have to get like their redness spotting  abilities checked to spot that it's also worth calling out the fact  that like hey some of these were minerals most of these had like the uncomfortable  chemicals that people can't pronounce they all work fine but the ones that  had minerals that didn't have any of those fancy scientific  ingredients yep totally fine regular lab muffin viewers ar

e looking up the  ingredients for this now and checking for BOS so mineral sunscreens don't work that well  without being pretty white on your skin so a lot of brands use a booster and it's a  essentially octyl salicylate a chemical sunscreen except with like a few extra  carbons so it absorbs UV just like a chemical sunscreen but it's not listed  on the label as a chemical sunscreen it's like a bit of a loophole and it's not  really a problem for most people because chemical sunscreens are safe

but it does kind  of demonstrate the shortcomings of mineral sunscreens because so many brands feel the need  to pretend that their sunscreen is fully mineral if you are allergic to octyl salicylate  then that is an ingredient to look out for but for everyone else it's not really a  big issue but it's worth noting that chemical sunscreens are safe and these sorts of loopholes  wouldn't exist if people would just accept that it doesn't matter the ingredients the SPF don't use mayonnaise that's d

umb I wasted a week of my life and probably gave myself like skin cancer or something  to prove to you that sunscreen works you're welcome internet now can I get this tape off my body so what is our big takeaway from  this long arduous experience it turns out that stuff that we've been  rubbing onto our bodies for years and has gone through rigorous experimentation it  does indeed protect your skin from sunburn shocking I know science works who would have guessed it sunscreen is one of the few s

kincare  products where that final formula does have to be clinically tested on human  skin for effectiveness before it gets sold and that's pretty cool because that is not the case for pretty much anything  else except like drug products and it's not foolproof every year  you'll see sunscreens like failing tests and a while ago one of the really big sunscreen  testing labs was conducting hardcore fraud a guy went to jail but most of the time when a sunscreen  doesn't work on you it's human erro

r like not applying enough or not reapplying missing spots not reapplying after you go into the water maybe applying sunscreen only  after you've gone into the sun and you've gotten quite a lot of  UV or applying expired sunscreen we found that there wasn't a strong  correlation to SPF and the tan that we got honestly I expected there to  be a bit more of a gradient across my body with lower SPFs failing and  letting in at least some of the rays I mean each session in the tanning booth was  mean

t to be the equivalent to three hours I would have expected some of the lower  SPF contenders to lose some level of effectiveness over that time giving us at least  some level of tan but no they seem totally okay I am a little surprised by this I would have  expected at least one of them to show a difference especially because they didn't seem to really  control how much they applied or how they applied but I guess it does make sense tanning beds are more UVA biased so  it gives more UVA than th

e sun does so that you can turn for longer without burning so again it is literally like the most ineffective  way of testing SPF because that is about burning and it's also less safe because you're  getting more UVA for the same dose of UVB I don't think those numbers for the  tanning beds are actually accurate because the sun produces about 95% UVA and 5% UVB those tanning beds I think those  numbers must be relative to the sun so it's like 10% of the UVB of the  Sun versus 50% of the UVB from

the Sun with those patches where he is burned he is  not like super super red so maybe he got more than enough UV to burn but less than four times as  much so all of these sunscreens would have passed it's kind of like if an exam is too easy then  everyone just gets 100 there's no difference between if you're really really  good at the subject or really bad in the actual SPF test how they get  around this like no result issue is they test how much UV your skin needs to burn  and they also know

the estimated SPF of the sunscreen so they know how much UV to use  in the test to like see where the line is so for like an SPF 30 sunscreen they might use  six different spots some of those spots will get less than 30 times the burning dose some of those  spots will get more than 30 times the burning dose also this setup he's got here is  kind of like the best case scenario most of the time when a sunscreen stops  working it's because the physical film on your skin starts rubbing off and  movi

ng around and like having gaps he's lying around still he's got  cooling fans he's got like no sweat and no movements so that is going to  last a lot better than in real life and if you're really concerned about how  chemicals and sunscreens are affecting your body and or the environment then  it seems like you can absolutely switch to a more mineral based sunscreen  that uses stuff like zinc oxide proven effective both by the FDA and my chest  and they don't get absorbed into your skin that zin

c oxide structure I'm  gonna pretend I didn't see that yeah I mean you can choose the mineral  sunscreens instead and it's good that people who are never going to use a chemical  sunscreen do know that that's an option but I do kind of wish that he mentioned that all of the scientific evidence overwhelmingly  shows that chemical sunscreens are safe mineral sunscreens aren't necessarily  better for the environment like I talked about before but they also aren't  necessarily safer for your health

I've done some videos before explaining  how safety assessments for sunscreens are done and that's what informs what  percentages are allowed in sunscreens there are like huge margins of safety  built into those so it's not like if you apply twice as much you're  going to be in like a danger zone and there are some possible health effects with  mineral sunscreens as well which everyone tends to forget because of this bias that we all have where  we assume natural means that things are safer the

biggest issue is that inhaling mineral  particles is just not great for you the EU actually banned titanium dioxide  nanoparticles in spray sunscreens because of that and also because as the textures  tend to be heavier then people tend to apply less and maybe expose themselves  to more UV than they thought they were finally though perhaps the biggest takeaway of all of this is not relying on sunscreen alone  you know what protected me the best during this entire experiment the medical  tape bet

ween the boxes and my shorts if you're going to be spending time  outside to take advantage of shade hats UV protective clothing like rash guards these will ensure that you're minimizing  your exposure as much as possible and all of those suggestions are  supported not only by the doctors but also by the sunscreen manufacturers themselves even the anti-sunscreen crowd's behind this one good to see that there is  something that we all can agree on Yep this is good advice in Australia we had a bun

ch of Public Health  campaigns which I think is now we're up to slip slop slap seek slide basically to protect yourself from the  sun you kind of want layers of protection so slip on a shirt slop on some sunscreen slap  on a hat seek shade and slide on some sunglasses so that way if one of your layers  has a problem so if you like miss a spot you'll still get some protection  from your other types of protection I don't know if the anti-sunscreen  crowd is really behind this though I see a lot of

people who  are really promoting lying out in the sun and baking as much as possible and yes a little bit of sun exposure is good for you but the amount you  need is really not that much if the UV index is three or over then  you should get enough if you're active in the sun even when you're taking  all of these sun protection measures one extra fun fact that I don't  think a lot of people know why dark skin evolved is not actually  to protect against skin cancer because the average age that pe

ople get  skin cancer and die is like 65 Evolution just does not care if  we live past like reproductive age UV actually destroys folate  which is vitamin B9 in your skin I think that might be a fun fact for  those people who are convinced that you need to lie out in the sun to get a vitamin D you are actually depriving  yourself of a different vitamin that was a surprisingly stressful watch  I am really impressed by his dedication here especially if he did come across  like these single tanning

session stats before he did it which I'm not sure he  did because you did like five sessions I really hope he's okay and I  hope he's really careful about getting mole checks from now on  because that was like not great he was wearing guacamole it's probably not the wisest decision  and I'm glad he warns people not to do it but from like a scientific curiosity  angle I am kind of glad I got to see it so just to re-emphasize don't do it  he's done it for us we don't need to fry ourselves and yea

h if your sunscreen  has an SPF label on it it has already been tested in a much safer and scientific  way than you could possibly do yourself and those tests still aren't foolproof  sunscreens do still fail testing sometimes I have a video all about that this one where I talk about why  things go wrong and how to pick a sunscreen that's more likely to be effective and once you have a good sunscreen you'll  also need to know how to use it and I've got another video which answers probably every 

question you've ever had about wearing sunscreen and for the mega mega nerds out  there I co-hosted a sunscreen conference we actually got one of the  top experts in SPF testing to do a talk all of those things will be in the description I hope you enjoyed this I'm gonna go get like this  like stress sweat off me I'll see you next time