Sun Safety

Family, Education, Health and Pets
21

Reviving this thread (16 years later!) after seeing this:

The report the BBC refers to is in the link below. It involved testing whether certain sunscreens offered the protection they claimed.

It looks as if a lot of the sunscreens tested may be Australian brands. Most of the sunscreens tested didn’t offer the protection claimed.

But, of the sunscreens with familiar sounding (at least to me) brand names, a Neutrogena and a Roche-Posay sunscreen actually offered the factor 50 protection claimed. A Nivea sunscreen offered factor 40 protection rather than the factor 50 protection claimed. See the chart in the link below.

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22

The difference between 40 and 50 is negligible in real terms:

The practical difference between SPF 40 and SPF 50 sunscreen is very small: SPF 40 blocks about 97.5% of UVB rays (letting through 2.5%), while SPF 50 blocks about 98% of UVB rays (letting through 2%)

The biggest problem with sun cream is that people don’t apply enough.

A test in the UK a few years ago replicated the Australian results. Interestingly, the much cheaper Aldi and Lidl suncreams passed the tests.