Sun Protection for the Gulf Coast
Have you seen the little UV ray index that your local media and the National Weather Service put out? Do you think anyone who has lived on the Gulf coast more than say, 5 minutes, really needs to look at the index to know if you needs sun protection? Face it, if the sun is out and you are too, you’re gonna burn if you don’t put on some kind of sun protection. We don’t need no stinkin’ index! That’s for people in Cleveland.
What we need are better, easier ways to protect ourselves from the sun. Fortunately, there has been some headway in that area. And there’s been some headway in research also. Let’s start with a scientific update on our old nemesis, the sunbeam. No longer thought of as soft and caressing, the sunbeam has been determined to be a cold blooded killer! Perhaps that’s too dramatic. Let’s put it another way… too much sun can kill you. And even if it doesn’t kill you immediately, it can cause deadly skin cancer. Even if it doesn’t cause cancer, it can cause something that a significant portion of our population fears far worse than cancer … wrinkles.
By now, we’ve all learned what SPF is. Sun Protection Factor. It measures sunscreens’ ability to filter out UVB, the portion of the insidious sunbeam that causes burning. But there’s another nasty part of the sunbeam … UVA. UVA also causes skin damage, but not the immediate kind. It causes the severe aging effects you see on people we describe, behind their backs, as having skin like old leather. And don’t even get me started on UVC. Thank god the upper atmosphere filters it out before it can reach us and cause us to burst into flames.
Here’s the problem with SPF. SPF doesn’t rate a sunscreen’s ability to filter UVA. And a lot of suncreens don’t block UVA ... you have to check the label. The FDA is working on a system to add UVA ratings to sunscreens, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
There is a new option available to help save our skin. It’s sun protective clothing. You say all clothing protects us from the sun? Not so fast. I thought so, too. But there is a rating system for clothing, and it rates the blockage of both UVB and UVA. It’s called the UPF scale, which stands for Ultraviolet Protection Factor. A UPF of 30 only lets in 1/30th of the UVB and UVA. So the higher the UPF, the better, just like with SPF.
It turns out that not all clothing fabric blocks out the same amount of those deadly sunbeams. I thought my good ol’ white cotton T-shirt was all the protection I needed. Oops. It turns out that white cotton T-shirts only have a protection factor of 7. And if it gets wet, the UPF drops to 3. So what kind of fabric does a good job of blocking the sunbeams?
John Barrows, President of Coolibar, Inc., was happy to share information about the sun protective clothing his company manufacturers, and he educated me on the whole history of the sun protective clothing industry. He and his wife, Mary Mills Barrows, wrote a book titled, “Sun Protection for Life”, which won an award from the American Academy of Dermatology, so he knows his stuff, which I’ll share.
It turns out that Australia has some of the nastiest sunbeams on earth. Combine that with a high percentage of the population being fair skinned, and you get the country with the highest incidence of skin cancer in the world. Luckily for Australians, their government actually noticed this and did something about it. In the 1980’s, State anti-cancer societies began public education programs. Over time, this program evolved into the comprehensive SunSmart campaign involving public education, training for various professionals, and the provision of resources to organizations and communities. It also led to the creation, marketing and government regulation of the sun protective clothing market. The Australian government tests and certifies sun protective clothing and issues “hang tags” that rate the garment’s UPF. Sun protective clothing now is a bigger market in Australia than sunscreens.
But what makes a garment “sun protective clothing”? According to the U.S. Skin Cancer Foundation, only clothing with a minimum UPF of 15 can be labeled as “sun protective clothing”. And to get the Skin Cancer Foundation’s Seal of Recommendation, the clothing has to have a minimum UPF of 30.
Mr. Barrows points out that all of Coolibar’s clothing is UPF rated 50+, which is the highest rating. How do they get such a high rating? “We use a number of families of fabrics, depending on the use of the garment. For example, we use a woven nylon microfiber that is embedded with titanium dioxide, which blocks sunlight. For swimwear, we avoid Lycra, because chlorine destroys it pretty quickly, and it starts falling out of the suit, leaving small holes that sunlight can penetrate. We instead use a special knit polyester that is good at absorbing UV.”
Having been brought up on cotton, the mention of things like “microfibers” brought up questions. I know cotton will shrink. Will the UPF factor of “microfibers” lower with time? “The ability of all fabrics to filter UV will decrease with usage,” he said. “But our fabrics are tested not when they are new, but only after they have been put through machines that simulate 40 washings and another machine that simulates lots of wear. So our rating of UPF 50+ is for a weathered garment, not a new one. A large portion of our customers have problems with the sun, like skin cancer or lupus, and we want to ensure they can rely on our clothing for the protection they need.” Wow. A company that cares about its customers? I hope that catches on. Maybe that explains why Coolibar was recognized in 2007 by Inc. magazine as one of the nation’s 500 fastest-growing private companies. That also may be why earlier this year, the Melanoma International Foundation made Coolibar its first officially endorsed sun protective apparel.
Call me old fashioned (which is exactly what Mr. Barrows did), but I still wondered if I should give up the ol’ white cotton T-shirt. After confirming that it did indeed only have a UPF of 7, I started to question if I should give this newfangled material a chance. But wait, is the newfangled stuff hot and stuffy? “We use very lightweight fabrics for warm weather usage,” parried Barrows. It turns out Coolibar’s lightweight fabric is one third lighter than fine linen. “And we incorporate ventilation into the design,” he continued. “We also have fabrics that wick moisture away from the skin, keeping you cool,” he finished, removing my last bit of skepticism.
So can we give up using sunscreens forever? “No, you still need sunscreen on the exposed portions of your body, your hands, face, and neck,” said Barrows. Coolibar even sponsors an annual ranking of the sunscreens most recommended by dermatologists. Isn’t that promoting your competition? “No, sunscreen is a complimentary product. You should use sunscreen in conjunction with our clothing,” he explained.
After speaking with Mr. Barrows, and learning about the state of the art sun protective clothing industry, it seems that the ol’ white cotton t-shirt has seen its last day as my first line of defense against those insidious sunbeams. This newfangled technology, unlike the UV index, is something we could actually use. I wonder if they know about sun protective clothing in Cleveland?
