Sunscreen or sun-scream?
By Roshni Sengupta


Oh, the scorching sun! Enemy of glowing and healthy skin! What, pray, is your defence against the cruel, burning sun? A tube or bottle of sunscreen---the anti-UV (ultraviolet) rays toiletry that promises to keep your skin radiant and supple even at the peak of summer. Before you coat yourself with it yet again, do take some time off to sample the toxic chemicals that any sunscreen contains. 

Most of the body’s vitamin D supply -- between 75% and 90% -- is generated by the skin’s exposure to sun rays. Using a sunscreen drastically lowers the cutaneous production of vitamin D. Combined with sedentary indoor lives, this raises the risk of vitamin D deficiency disorders such as rickets, osteomalacia, and osteoporosis. Most sunscreen concoctions also contain octocrylene---a UV filter belonging to the cinnamate family of chemicals. Apart from being a skin irritant, cinnamates can also have hormone-disrupting effects. 

Potassium hydroxide -- an alkali-controlling agent used in sunscreens -- can cause serious eye damage. Chemicals like methylparaben, butylparaben, and phenoxyethanol -- the inevitable components of any cosmetic cream -- may lead to severe dermatitis and other contact allergies. Scientists at the Memorial Sloan Cancer Centre in New York, USA, and the US Government Brookhaven Laboratory have found that sunscreens protected against sunburn and cancers like carcinoma, but not against melanoma that has increased by 20-fold in Europe and USA since 1935!

Sunscreen users have a higher risk of developing malignant skin cancer that is linked to oxybenzone, a chemical used in many sunscreen products with high SPF (sun protection factor). Although its function is to ‘filter’ UV light on the surface of the skin, converting it from light to heat, it can also be absorbed through the skin. Since light is converted to heat in the basal layers of the skin, damage to the growing cells is very likely.

While it is impossible to make an effective sunscreen cream without chemicals or sun block agents, other options could be explored. One of the oldest tried-and-tested methods is to use tin oxide as a ‘reflecting’ coating to the skin. Tin oxide is widely used in wound dressings and considered safe. Applied as a cream, it is visible in daylight. Although ‘safe’, it should be avoided by people with dry skin conditions, as it has a drying action.

Most people will remember calamine lotion as both a sun protection and a soothing agent. It is based on zinc oxide, is pink in colour, visible in the daylight, and can be easily washed off in water. It is likely that this, and other ‘reflective’ sunscreens, will in the long run turn out to be much safer than ‘absorbing’ lotions containing oxybenzone or benzophenone. 

Right now it’s tough to tell who the enemy is: the sun or the sunscreen?