![]() ![]() ![]() But paddling in and seeking shade for the midday hours of intense sun from 11:00 a.m. “We all want to spend an entire day outdoors doing what we love,” says Marmur. ![]() “It should not be a V-neck and ideally will have a thumbhole to hold the sleeve over the top portion of your hands, too.” Her favorite options? “Surfers have the coolest gear,” she notes, so look to sustainable surf brands like Patagonia and Kassia + Surf. “Everyone who snorkels or surfs or even just goes to the beach must own at least one long-sleeved sun shirt or rash guard with a UPF-UV-protective fabric-of 50-plus,” says Marmur. Then pull on sun-protective clothing to cover the rest of your body. Rub it on your face, the front and back of your neck, ears, hands, and legs (which is the “number one site of malignant melanoma among women,” she points out). While it’s never smart to skip SPF entirely, you can be strategic about how you put it on, says Manhattan dermatologist Ellen Marmur, M.D. “We also believe that a little whitening is a good thing–you can see where your sunscreen might be missing and when you don’t see it anymore, you know it’s time to reapply.” While the non-nano claim is not FDA regulated, look for brands that have data to back it up on their websites.Īpply mineral sunscreen in small sections and really rub it in-this helps the product last longer on your skin and minimizes whitening, says Blum. At that point, “the toxicity drops off and there’s very little threat,” adds Downs. Your best bet is to go for coated, non-nano ingredients larger than 150 nanometers. “This blows up the cells so they die,” says Downs. When those ingredients are uncoated and nano-size (less than 35 nanometers in diameter), they can enter the cells of invertebrates and cause oxidative stress in sunlight. Zinc oxide and titanium dioxide aren’t entirely worry-free options. Not All Mineral Sunscreens Are Created Equal See the Haereticus Environmental Laboratory’s comprehensive list for all potentially harmful ingredients. Try to avoid oxybenzone (the most common compound found in some 3,500 sunscreens worldwide), octinoxate (which is even more toxic than oxybenzone, but usually found in lower concentrations), and octocrylene. The active ingredients in chemical sunscreens tend to be the most problematic, says Downs, though preservatives, such as parabens, can also pose an environmental threat. “And once those reefs die, we’ve found they’re not coming back,” notes Downs. “It helped explain what we’re seeing in the wild.” Besides acting as an endocrine disruptor, oxybenzone can damage coral DNA and might lead to what Downs calls “reef zombies” or corals and other reef organisms that look “healthy but are actually sterile and dead-so they cannot reproduce.” Such UV-absorbing compounds can also contribute to coral bleaching, which occurs when the life-sustaining algae that normally lives on coral vanishes, due to changes in ocean temperatures, stress, or pollution. “We did studies under controlled conditions and we were horrified at what we found,” says Downs. A growing body of evidence indicates that those found in chemical sunscreens-specifically oxybenzone, among others-might be dangerous to wildlife. Since then, Downs has devoted his research efforts to pinpointing which ingredients pose a serious threat to marine life worldwide. “On a single day, about to 2,000 to 5,000 people visited the beach and when they left, the surface of the water would look like an oil spill-it had an iridescent sheen.” After pulling samples and testing for toxicity, Downs discovered that chemicals in sunscreen-generously slathered on by snorkelers, divers, and beachgoers-had washed off in the water and stood out “like a burning red flag.” “He told us, ‘It’s the tourists,’” says Downs. They were stumped until a local Rastafarian overheard their conversation and made a passing comment. Specifically, “they wanted to know what was killing all the coral reefs.” Curious, Downs, who is the executive director of Haereticus Environmental Laboratory, flew down with a team of researchers to investigate the nearshore habitat. “They wanted to figure out what was happening to the bay around Trunk Bay in the U.S. In the spring of 2005, Craig Downs, Ph.D., a forensic ecotoxicologist in Virginia, received an unusual phone call from the National Park Service. ![]()
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