Selects: Sunburn, Suntans and Sunscreen
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Hi, everybody. It's Chuck here on Select Saturday. Hopefully this one is coming out in the summertime like I think I timed it out to. But this one goes back to July 18th, 2017. It's on your skin and what happens when you go outside. It's called sunburn, suntans, and sunscreen. Pleased to enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. ♪

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bright. There's Jerry. This is Stuff You Should Know. Summer sunburn edition. You're 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 sunscreen.

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, tans look pretty good. I look foxy. 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 your skin. Sure. Next up, ascots.

Going down the George Hamilton route. But the rest of my body, well, my lower arms are tan and my face is tan. Do you have like milk bottle calves? Tell me you do. Everything else is white. Take off your pants. Well, they're already off. Oh, okay. As always, as per tradition. Well, your pants really are off. Jerry, did you know Chuck's pants are off? She's known for nine years. Remember the T-shirt that listener made? It's pants off, mics on. Yep.

Or Mike's on, pants off. I can't remember the order that we do it. Wax on, wax off, I think. This one's long overdue, though, I think. And file it 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...

Tanning bed company saying like, ooh, you need that vitamin D. Yeah, I know. Or, hey, that base tan...

That'll help you not burn. Right. We'll go through all this. We're going to. But let's start where everything starts, Chuck. Let's start with the sun. All right? Sorry. So the sun is streaming down. You're familiar with the sun, our star, our closest star. Sure. Provides light, heat, that kind of stuff. It's also bearing down on us. Yeah. Deadly radiation. Trying to kill us. All the time. Yep. Right? And there's three types of radiation.

Well, there's three kinds of energy that the sun shoots at us. There's infrared heat. There's visible light. Mm-hmm. Light.

And then there's ultraviolet light. The scary one. Ultraviolet radiation, right? And then you can break down ultraviolet radiation into three more components. UVA. Boo. UVB. Boo. And UVC. Actually, if we didn't have our atmosphere, we'd all be dead right now just because of UVC. It's extremely deadly. But we do, so that's all right. Right. If you're an astronaut, you've got to worry about UVC.

Right. But those of us here on Earth, we only have to worry about UVA 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 sunburn you. Right, which is why everybody wants to protect themselves from it. But it turns out, as we'll see, UVA is—

It's even worse than UVB. It is no slouch. 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. Yeah, don't be fooled. No, because UVA is still getting through. And as you'll see, you need to protect yourself. As a matter of fact, as we will see, some people recommend that you use sunscreen all over your body every day, indoors and out. Okay.

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. So you were 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 90% of UV light. Yeah, so you got the sun coming down on you. Yeah. And then you're also getting a second dose of it reflected from the snow. At a 90% rate. Right. 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 20%. Yep. Where you will not

get sunburned, they say, is in a greenhouse. Yeah, did you know that? Didn't know that. You'll sweat to death. Sure, and you can still get tan, but you won't burn. Yeah, apparently glass is a substance that absorbs UV radiation. This is a big thing that I realized, Chuck, and 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 sunburned and then you got tanned as a result of sunburn, and then you were fine. Oh, yeah, like the people that are like, oh, I always burn on day one, and then it turns into a tan. Right, and then I keep that for the summer, and I don't even need sunblock after that, right? No, actually, a suntan and a sunburn are two different things. Yeah. And they're the result of two different types of UV radiation. Yeah, people that say that stuff are completely wrong.

talking out of their buttholes. - Right, don't listen to them. Listen to us instead. - Yeah, 'cause there's actual science behind it. The UVB is what causes sunburns. UVA rays are different, and they are what ultimately, I think it's a deeper penetration, they will ultimately cause wrinkly skin and internal collagen damage and stuff like that. - Right, so UVA for aging, UVB for burning, right?

Yes, and combined with both, you look like that lady in There's Something About Mary. Right. Made out with a dog. Yeah. So it's not like we're just completely at the mercy of the sun, right? We have natural reactions to sunlight that are—

of protective measures, but really more than anything, we're finding nowadays that there are 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. Yeah. Hence...

your sunburn. But it turns out that a tan is the same thing, basically. It's a big red flag or a big brown flag that says you're undergoing genetic damage currently. You may want to get out of the sun, not go lay by the pool some more. You got your tan, you're fine. Yeah. And when you're getting that tan, what that is, is a pigment called melanin,

And it is produced in reaction to that, I guess, UV...

UVA. UVA. Yeah. Man, I'm going to get this. UVA tan. A for agent, B for burning. Right. I should remember that. Yeah, but it's tough to separate the burn from the tan and think that they're two different things after thinking that they're, you know, related all your life, you know? Well, it's why tanning beds use mainly UVA light. Right. Because they don't want you to sunburn. Right.

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. Right. And you don't get tan from UVB, so why even include it anyway 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, your body needs vitamin D. And so go to the tanning bed because it's safer than being in the sun. 100% BS. Yeah. You get vitamin D from UVB, not UVA. Right. And tanning beds use UVA to get you tanned. Oh, is that right? So that's completely bogus. Okay. To begin with. Yeah.

One recent estimate suggested indoor tanning caused about 420,000 cases of skin cancer in the United States every year. Oh, my God. That's about double the number of lung cancer linked to smoking. Wow. And 12 states at this point have outlawed tanning beds for minors under 18 years old. Yeah, that seems smart. I got one more stat for you. Okay. People who use tanning beds for the first time before the age of 30...

uh, presuming they will, you know, it's not a one-off, uh, have a 75% increased risk in developing melanoma. Wow.

Don't go to tanning beds, people. No, that's great advice, Chuck, man. I mean, 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 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 going to age prematurely from going to a tanning bed. And that whole, like, you know, people will say, I don't care. I'm young. I want to look tan and look good. That's why we have nanny states, to choose for you because you're too stupid to choose for yourself. Was that judgy? 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 go back to the skin and what the skin's doing, okay? All right. Should we take a break first? Or are we premature? We're a little worked up. We can. All right. Let's take a little break. Okay. We'll get into the skin. We'll get into the skin.

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You said that when UVA interacts with our skin, melanocytes 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. It actually absorbs melanin.

UVA radiation. And under normal circumstances, I think 900, like literally 999 times out of 1,000, when it interacts with a photon of UVA radiation, it takes that photon and it basically absorbs it into its molecular structure. Yeah. And it spits it out as waste heat. So it takes the radiation and turns it into something that's just, it's

It's just heat. It's not deadly. It's not dangerous any longer. Yeah. And 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. Right. There's a longstanding myth that people who have melanin production constantly, people with darker skin tones, that they can't burn.

burn and that they can't get skin cancer and that's wrong on both accounts. Correct. It is more difficult for somebody with very dark skin tone to get sunburned. Yeah. But I was reading... And skin cancer. Right. Yeah, there's a lower prevalence. But I was reading up on it and

I saw some dermatologist said, if you have skin, you can get sunburned. Just give it enough time under the right conditions, you'll get sunburned. Sure. And then, yes, skin cancer is a thing as well. People of the fairer your complexion, the worse you're going to burn. And the higher your incidence of getting skin cancer from being out in the sun is. Sure.

but it can happen. It's just a spectrum, but on the other end, the darkest end of the spectrum, that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It just means it happens less. So all of this applies to people of all different skin tones. Yeah, and like we said before, when it comes to UVA, that's a deeper penetrating light into the skin. It's going to

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 UVA light, something called Matrix Metalloproteinase 1 was

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 give skin structure and that leads to wrinkles and saggy skin eventually. And they found that even when you started to tan the the MMP1

production didn't decrease at all. It just kept going. So this idea that when you develop a tan, when your melanin production kicks in, that you're being protected, that's actually not the case at all we're finding. That it's actually just, it's a defense mechanism, but it's not a protective measure that keeps everything fine once your tan's set. Yeah, I looked up just a quadruple check about the base tan theory. Yeah.

and it's complete BS, they found that a base tan provides, and we'll talk about SPF, sun protection factor, right? Yeah. I don't know why I got hesitant the last second there. A base tan provides an SPF of three or less, which means it buys you about 10 extra minutes.

the Sun right 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 tan helps yeah so they won't do the things you need to do like wear the hats or the UV shirts or the suntan or sunscreen and

or stay out longer. Right. 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 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. Right. Or don't

understand the reality of the situation, which is sun's going to mess you up pretty good. All right. Well, that's coming up in a sec. We've talked about suntan. Right. So now let's talk about sunburn. Sunburn, kind of simply put, is literally cellular damage from ultraviolet radiation. It's called...

or erythema. It's a 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 that 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 sunburn. From UVB rays. Right. 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, and it turns white, then goes back red real quick. It turns white because you momentarily disrupt those capillaries. Right. And then they immediately go, no, we need to send blood there. And then the red just comes rushing back. Right. And there's no worse feeling than that.

a bad sunburn no it's pretty bad it ruins your beach trip sure if you get that thing on the first day everybody gets mad at you you're screwed yeah it's just no good it's no good it's no good and 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 no you don't know my skin it turns to tan right no it doesn't it's

That's wrong. There is a lot of folklore surrounding suntan and sunburns and stuff. Well, I think because people think they just like, I know my body and my skin. Like, no, there's science that supersedes all that. Right. But I think the reason that there is so much myth and folklore around sunburns

sun tans and sun burns is because science really kind of dropped the ball for a while and didn't really investigate this. They're only now starting to investigate it on like a really legitimate level. Yeah. You know? That's a good point. So, I mean, it's kind of science's fault. And like you said before, any skin can get burned. Any part of the body can get burned. If it sees, if the sunlight can touch it,

even through clothing, which we'll talk about a bit later too, you will get sunburned. Yeah, that's another thing too. You might think while I'm wearing a shirt, most shirts, unless it's specifically designed to protect against UV radiation, is letting UV through. And you can get burned, you can get tanned, you can get wrinkled, you can cause cellular damage anytime UV radiation comes in contact with your skin.

And from what I saw, the UVB radiation is usually the likeliest culprit when you get skin cancer because it goes in there and directly knocks around DNA. DNA, 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 everybody...

Every once in a while, it gets excited and it gets kind of knocked out of whack. And some of its base pairs fuse together in what we call a mutation. Right. And if that base pair gets fused and isn't repaired and it happens to be at a site that, say, expresses a protein that protects against tumors, well, then you can get skin cancer. And that's how it happens. Yeah. And –

Even though that happens, the base pairs fuse 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. And, you know, since you mentioned the UV clothing or SPF clothing, yeah.

They are pretty great. Like, most people I know now wear those shirts. Well, they look cool. Well, I wear one of those now because it serves three purposes. Looks kind of cool. Yeah. I hate applying sunscreen, like, all over my body. I'll hit my face and arms and stuff. But, like, putting it all over my chest and belly and back and all, it's just, you're going to miss spots. Sure. And have weird...

Streaks of sunburn here and there where you missed it right and it's just no good And then third, you know when you have some extra pounds, it's like slimming well

If you wear the T-shirt in the pool, it's not a good look. But you can get away with the SPF shirt. I think that is one reason why SPF shirts were adopted. Oh, sure. Yeah? Yeah. But they really work great. And they dry super quick. Like, my skinny friends use them, you know. Right. But it's good for fat dudes, too. Sure.

But they are rated up to like 50 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 denim, they said, is one of the best things because it's such a tight weave. Yeah. Nothing like wearing a jean jacket at the beach. Put on that denim tuxedo and you're all set. Yeah.

But a UPF rating, they go from about 15 to 50. If you can hold it up to the light and not see anything, the darker the better. Mine is like gray and black. And some of them are even treated, I think. Yeah, that's what I thought. So some of them are just the weave is so tight that sunlight can't penetrate? It's a physical barrier to 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. Sure. I don't know if those are, like, soaked in some, like, carcinogenic. Right. Probably not, right? Yeah, probably not. It's probably magic dust of some sort. But this woman who is, I think she's a director of

of dermatology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York says that clothing is the single most effective form of sun protection, even more than sunscreen, kind of for the reasons I mentioned because you get complete coverage. I've got a long-sleeve one too, so it's just nice. I throw it on. I 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. I guess because you're usually vertical,

In a pool? Like I don't lay around on a float? Yeah. And it's underwater? Well, you want to be careful. UV 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 flip-flop tan lines.

On the tops of my feet. I do too. I kind of forgot about the tops of feet. Dude, I am religious about putting sunblock on the tops of my feet and I still got tan lines. I saw a kid once, his feet turned into like Fred Flintstone's feet because he got burned on the tops of them. Except for the flip-flop lines or just period? It was never happening to me. The whole foot. Well, they say the tops of feet, like the tops of your ears and earlobes,

Did you say the eyeballs can burn? The back of the neck. Those are some of the areas that you're most likely to miss with sunscreen. But I did not mention eyeballs. Yes, your eyeballs can burn, can get sunburned. Yeah, I think I've experienced that. Oh, man, that must have been awful. Like after being in the sun all day, my eyes just sort of burning and irritated. I wonder if that's what that is.

No, I think you would know. Yeah. Like, I think my eyes are going to die. Man, that must be awful. Yeah. All right. Should we take another break? Yeah, and then we'll come back with sunscreen. Hi, icons. It's Paris Hilton. Check out my new single, Chasin', featuring Meghan Trainor. Out today.

I feel so lucky to collaborate with Megan and how perfectly she put my experience into words. Listen to Chasen from my new album, Infinite Icon, on iHeartRadio or wherever you stream music. Don't forget to visit InfiniteIcon.com to pre-save my album. Sponsored by 1111 Media.

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more you save do not delay dear listener experience the fashion revolution that is snag and visit snag tights.us today all right if we were in the way back machine we travel back to ancient egypt you might see people slapping oat bran on their skin or jasmine rice bran what i say oat bran

That was from the Food Fads episode. What a dummy. Yeah, rice bran spreading, I guess, moist rice bran. Why not? Or jasmine. They're like, why not? It's 2500 BC. Let's party. But apparently jasmine is good at repairing damaged skin. I wonder if they tried jasmine rice. Oh, man. How about that? Yeah. I would have been, like, onto something back then. Yeah, you would have. So they did this back then, but actual sunscreen...

Didn't come around until the turn of the century, until the early 1900s. Yeah. Thousands of years after the Egyptian dynasties were over. Yep. There was a guy named Milton Blake. He was Australian. And he came up with what is considered the first sunblock in his kitchen, apparently, over like the course of 12 years. And they still make it in Australia. Can you really call it sunblock back then, though? It's probably more like...

They call it a good first try. Yeah. It took him about 12 years of experimentation. But like you said, he finally began selling it. And is it, what's the brand called? Milton Blake? That was the one thing that I didn't look up. All right. Well, while you do that, I'll go to the 1940s. To Switzerland, there was a Swiss man named Franz Greta who was a climber. And we mentioned snow 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 Inglourious Bastards? Is that the same mountain? Oh, I don't know. I forgot about that part. Yeah. But he got really burned and was like, this is awful. So he came back and started work. And in 1946, came up with the Pitts Boone Glacier Cream. And this had an SPF of 2.

Which, like you said, good start. I don't even know if that qualifies as a good start. Well, it was probably more than Milton Blakes, don't you think? Well, supposedly, Caucasian people have a natural SPF of about three. So this guy somehow managed to bring it down a notch.

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 II and got a lot of sun up there. And so he developed something called, he labeled Red Vet Pet, Red Veterinary Petrolatum.

which I think is the same thing as petroleum. Right. And I was surprised when I saw that he was an airman and vet, I figured it meant like a veteran of a war. Yeah, no. Veterinary. Who knew? And then he would later add a little cocoa butter, a little coconut oil, and voila, you have Coppertone. Yeah.

And then in 1956, they revealed the little Coppertone Girl illustration. Yeah. And it became a household hit. I think actually helped sunblock in general become a thing by the 1960s. Yeah. That little girl's name is Sherry Irwin. And she was the daughter of...

of the woman who designed it. Yeah, the illustrator, right? Yeah, Joyce Ballantyne in 1959 used her own daughter as a model. And Joyce Ballantyne on her own was very...

just sort of an anomaly at the time. She got a lot of work as a graphic artist in the 1950s, and her daughter called her a maverick in that way, and that she was, you know, in the 1950s, it was kind of tough for a lady to get that kind of high-dollar work. Sure. And so hats off to you. Joyce Ballantyne. Yep. And Cherry's still around. I can see that. Joyce might be, too. I saw a recent thing. Really? This is 1956. Yeah.

Yeah, she may be gone, but the article I read wasn't that. Oh, yeah, no, wait. She could totally be around. I mean. I forgot what year it was. I didn't catch the date on the article I read about her. I got you. But it's worth looking up. She's interesting. So, yeah, Coppertone took off in the 1960s is when sunscreens kind of caught hold a little bit, but it wasn't until the late 70s until the FDA got involved.

and said maybe we should 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 the FDA did when they got involved with sunscreen, especially in the U.S., they're roundly criticized for basically being really slow at testing the chemicals that are used. Yeah.

On the one hand, hats off for caring. Sure. That the chemicals we put on our bodies aren't going to kill us. But at the same time, hurry up. Right. 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 28, 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 willy-nilly about what they'll allow. They've actually researched and okayed 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 21st century, it protected you from UVB only. Yes. And even still, there's plenty of sunscreens out there that only protect you from UVB. Oh, yeah. So if you want...

protection from UVB and UVA, which is what you want, you want to find one that's called broad-spectrum sunscreen. Yeah, and it will say that. They will champion that very clearly on the label. Yeah, and if it's not on the label, it doesn't do anything to protect you from UVB. No. From UVA. Yeah, UVA. Only UVB. So you'll get a tan, but you won't burn if you use it correctly. Yes, you will just age rapidly. Right.

So with sunscreen, you will see also on the label, it will say SPF, sun protection factor of 15 or 30 or 50 or 100. Apparently, it goes up to 110 now.

Really? Yeah, and there's a lot of controversy with that too, which we'll talk about. But with sun-proof factor, this is how they determine it. Are you ready? Yeah. They take the sunscreen, and they put a little square on somebody's bottom, and then they expose it to UV radiation. And they use the bottom because that is the part of the body least likely to have gotten sun. Sure. It's like a blank slate. Right, yeah. Without being a sexual organ. Well put. Yeah.

Yeah, because you don't want to test sun. No. No. And then they'll go to the other buttock and they will say expose that to UV radiation, but it won't be treated with sunscreen. Yeah. And they'll do this up again and again and again, basically until you burn. Yeah. And then they will say, okay, well, what was the minimum dose for the untreated buttock?

And we're going to take that and 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 going to round down to the nearest five. And that's what sun 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 10 minutes in the sun with nothing –

If you put on SPF 15, you can be in the sun for about 150 minutes without burning. Yeah, because there's another way to... There's a formula for taking SPF to figure out how it applies to you. And it is you take the...

The number of minutes it takes you to burn, which who knows that? Do you know how long it takes you to burn? Nope. 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. Right.

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 wherever in the sun. Yeah, they're applying the amount you're supposed to apply. Right. I would say just cut everything in half.

To be safe. That's probably a pretty good rule of thumb. Like if you're like, I'm good with a 15, use a 30. Maybe even by three quarters because I saw a lot of people use between a quarter to a half of what you're supposed to use. Right. And one reason they do well, the beginning application is already shortchanged. And then you need to reapply this stuff because even though they say sweatproof and waterproof, it's...

We all know that that isn't true like throughout the day. Supposedly, if you in the United States market something as water resistant or very water resistant, it has to last either 40 or 80 minutes respectively in the water. Yeah. 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.

No. Like you said, you don't. No. It's my great failing in life. It's one of mine for sure. Well, and we'll get back to application here in a minute, but I don't think we ever said for sure how this stuff works. Oh, yeah.

They work in a couple of different ways, one of two ways. They form a barrier by 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. It reflects the sun. It just bounces right off of it. Yeah, like if you put zinc oxide on your face, you're golden.

It is a gross, greasy, white mess that's seemingly impossible to absorb. But if you don't care what you look like, or ironically, if you do care what you look like in the long term, but don't care in the short term, that's what you should be using on your face for sure. You like having a nose? Yes. You should put zinc oxide on it. You should. So that's a physical barrier. What the chemical filters do is,

They act like a synthetic melanin. Yeah. 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. That's amazing. That's what sunscreen is. It's a... It's a...

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. That'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. Oat bran. Yeah, rice bran. So we mentioned, you know, I think you said they go up to what now, 110? That's the highest I saw. So the controversy there is basically...

It doesn't – it's not an exponential growth. Anything over 30, they just consider 30 plus because if you wear something that's a 110, it's not like, well, then that's four times almost as much as a 30. Right.

It doesn't work that way. No. And supposedly, if you burn in 10 minutes, right, and you are, say, using a 70, you should be able to sit out in the sun for 700 minutes without getting a burn. Yeah. Technically, if everything was 100% right, yeah.

That may be true, but it never works out that way in practice. So just throw out that idea altogether. Yeah. Right? And like you said, the FDA wanted it to just be 30 plus because at 30, an SPF of 30 blocks 96.7% of the sun's harmful rays. Right? Yeah. Okay.

50, though, only blocks 98%, and 100 blocks 99%. And yeah, blocking 99% is better than blocking 96.7%. Right. But if you are sitting there just going by...

the SPF number and you're using a 30 and then you think, well, if I use 100, I can just put it on once and stay out all day. That's where the problem lies. It gives a false sense of security where you shouldn't have security. And so the FDA was saying, everybody just use 30 and use it correctly and reapply it a lot. I think what we use in our family is generally the 70-50

And then we also have the straight up zinc oxide. Oh, you do, huh? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I don't care what I look like anymore. Sure. Clearly. I have my pants off. I've got one of those like big wide brim like floppy fishing hats and like camo with like the neck thing and everything. Yeah, yeah. I'll rock that. I don't care. Like the old jungle hat, like the Vietnam jungle hat. I, Emily, wears a big straw hat because she just had a little skin cancer removed from her temple.

Oh, no. Is she all right? Yeah, she's good. They got it, and she's going to keep going back, but everything looks like – in most cases, it is a little minor thing. Right. But she's like hardcore now, and she always – Good for her. She's been hardcore about sunscreen for a while, but now it's that and a hat. Yeah. And I wear my trusty pith helmet.

You have a pith helmet? Yeah. A pith helmet. Mm-hmm. A pith helmet. I do. That's awesome. 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. Mm-hmm. Because they're great. They're comfortable. They breathe. Right. Yeah.

They block out the sun. I think they're super cool. Yeah. Because, you know, I'm the only guy around with a pith helmet on. Sure. So I'm easy to spot in a crowd. Pith helmet and a UV shirt. And no pants. Right. Milk bottle white calves. No. Well, yeah. That's about right. Yeah. If you see me at the pool, that's me. That's awesome. Ray-Bans, pith helmet. Yeah. Yeah.

UV shirt. Well, that's another one too. Like even if you don't like wearing sunglasses, T.S., 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, like, bright spaces and airports and grocery stores. Well. A lot of times I'll wear my sunglasses. It's a statement. I just, I don't know, man. I don't like bright light. Yeah. I hate it. So, do you lay out in the sunlight? No. Okay. I don't either. No, no, no. Like, it's always in the shade for me. No, like, I don't lay out at all. But, I mean, if you're, like, hanging out by a pool or something. I'm almost always in the water. Okay. Yeah.

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 do? Like read a book? Listen to music? Sure. Yeah, I'm almost always in the water because it's so god-awful hot for me and my sweatiness. 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, right about to your nipples. Yeah. You're safe. Yeah. Nipples up. Yeah.

Got to be careful, Chuck. Or I'll get one of those noodles, foam noodles, and I just saddle it up and straddle it. And a good, a thick noodle keeps me at about mid-chest level. Nice. 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? So it's like a seat. Do 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 I had to do a little work to keep my chin up. Yeah, you don't want to work. Well, a little bit of kicking is okay every now and then, but I had to kind of constantly kick to keep my neck up. Yeah. And I like to just be either chest high or neck high in water. That's my recipe. I don't think we mentioned how much you're supposed to use. No, and we should. You're supposed to use...

For an average adult body, whatever the heck that means, about a shot glass size, about an ounce of sunscreen on your body, and about a nickel size amount for your face and neck. Right. So you put that on.

15 to 30 minutes before you go outside to let it absorb and do its work. Yeah, a lot of people don't do that. 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 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 an SPF as you want. It will block more percentage of the rays. It will just...

Just don't put your full faith in it. Yeah. Don't do the formula. Just throw the formula out. Go high SPF, broad spectrum, reapply, and don't forget some areas of your feet like your ears and stuff. And they also said, and this is good advice, their number one thing. Where'd you get this actually? Do you remember? All over. Which part? The one through five tips. I think that was from How Stuff Works. Oh, okay. It says know thyself. So if you're super white, red-headed, Irish-

person, then you know you've been dealing with this your whole life. You don't have to be told. But you burn 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. Yeah, for sure. Got anything else? I do. I got one more thing just on the spray versus the cream. All these sprays are the rage now, you know, because they're super easy. The wind. Well, yeah, sure. Yeah.

The wind is a factor. I didn't think about that. They are very convenient, but Consumer Reports says don't use them on your kids because inhaling the fumes is no good. Yeah, you can tell. You get a mouthful that you're like, this is not good for me. Basically, what it comes down to is the upside is that...

If you are more likely to use the spray than nothing, then use the spray. 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. 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. Okay. Have you been spraying your face? Sometimes. And it says how long you apply it makes a difference. So if you just spray for two to three seconds...

you're not getting enough. Oh, yeah. You definitely don't want to do it on your face then. So they definitely side with creams 100% is better. Yeah. But if you just won't use anything because you hate the cream, then use the spray. Yeah. That's good advice. One day we're going to have some perfect sunscreen that does the trick, and everybody's going to know how to use it just right, and everything will be great. Just in time for this climate change thing too. Yeah. Yeah.

If you want to know more about sunscreen, sunblock, suntan, 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 gel, it's time for listener mail.

I'm going to 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.

Oh, burn. 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. Yeah. That makes zero sense. It's not like shooting fireworks off the day before the 4th of July, you know?

Like if you can vote earlier, vote earlier. Yes. 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 internetting correctly. Nice. Pretty good, Chuck. Shut that down. And hats off to Rebecca for just being genuinely puzzled by it rather than like, you're an idiot. Yeah.

If you want to get in touch with us like Rebecca did, you can send us an email to stuffpodcasts at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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