What's in a number?
High SPFs may give sunscreen users a false sense of security
Shonda Schilling is a sunscreen fanatic. Shortly after being diagnosed with malignant melanom a on her back in 2001, the woman who spent many a spring training worshiping the sun established the SHADE Foundation to educate people about skin cancer and how to avoid it.
Today, she never leaves the house without slathering on a creamy coat of sunscreen, SPF 30. So now that at least two sunscreen brands are offering a more exotic skin-protection factor 70, we asked Schilling if she's going to trade up.
"No," she says. "It doesn't matter." Indeed, she may be right.
Two lawsuits have been filed within the past year -- one in California and one in New Jersey -- seeking class - action status against some of the country' s major sunscreen brands, including Neutrogena and Hawaiian Tropic, both of which have hit shelves with SPF 70 products. The suits charge that the manufacturers have for years misled consumers about the level of UVA (ultraviolet A) protection in each tube.
With one in five Americans likely to develop skin cancer over the course of a lifetime, according to the American Cancer Society, sky-high SPFs would seem to make sense, especially at a time when bronzers and spray tans offer an aesthetic alternative to baking in the sun. But a higher SPF generally only protects wearers from UVB light -- not UVA.
UVB is what gives you a burn, or tan. UVA penetrates deep into the skin and can cause melanoma, a dangerous form of cancer. At the least, UVA causes skin to lose its tone and elasticity, causing wrinkles and other signs of aging. Worse, neither glass nor shade can protect against UVA, the long-wavelength, low-energy radiation.
Because many consumers have assumed -- even before the lawsuit -- that they received all the protection they needed from sunscreen, they may have exposed themselves to greater danger by staying out in the sun.
The UVA issue has some worried that an SPF as high as 70 could actually do more harm than good to unwitting consumers.
"The problem is, people go out with a false sense of coverage that 70 is going to last all day," says Schilling, wife of Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling. "You still have to apply it [sunscreen] every two hours."
Schilling says she and her family use a brand from Australia, where lifetime skin cancer rates are a staggering 50 percent. In Australia, sunscreen makers must be able to prove that a product protects against 90 percent of UVA light as well as UVB. By contrast, in the United States, the FDA has no criteria to judge the effectiveness of UVA protection -- only UVB, which can be determined by the SPF. (Schilling said she is not an official endorser of any sunscreen.)
Still, despite the concern by some over higher SPFs, Deborah A. Scott , a doctor and director of the Center for Laser Dermatology and Skin Health at Brigham and Women's Hospital, says she believes a higher SPF cannot hurt.
"The difference between 50 and 70 is not that much," she says. However, the average person is supposed to apply an amount of sunscreen equal to the size of a golf ball. "People don't do that. So an SPF 70 is probably not five times stronger than an SPF 15 because people aren't using it right."
The only product that could offer 100 percent protection, Scott says, is zinc oxide, the super creamy goop lifeguards tend to wear on their noses. And even then, she says, "only if you really put it on thick." 