Last month, Google Trends put out a list of the top five questions people had about sunburn cures. Now they did the same thing for SUNBLOCK. Here are the top five questions we’ve been Googling about sunscreen this summer . . .
1. How long does it last? If you’re talking shelf life, three years. Or if you mean how often to reapply, it’s every two hours. Especially if you’re swimming.
2. How does sunscreen work? Some of the chemicals in it reflect UV rays, so they don’t hit your skin. Other chemicals absorb them, so your skin doesn’t.
3. Is sunscreen bad for you? There’s been talk that a chemical called oxybenzone might cause cancer, but there’s not a lot of solid proof yet.
Harvard recently did a blog post that said stats linking it to cancer could be skewed. They say people who wear a lot of sunblock might have a higher risk of skin cancer, because they just spend more time in the sun. Not because sunscreen is causing it.
4. When was sunscreen invented? Chemists have been working on it since the ’30s. A guy in Austria came up with one in 1938 that only had an SPF of two. Then we had SPF 15 by the ’70s. And the first waterproof sunblock hit stores in 1977.
5. What’s the best sunscreen? “Consumer Reports” does an annual ranking. This year’s list includes the Walmart brand Equate Sport Lotion, with an SPF of 50. They also say Hawaiian Tropic’s Sport Spray is good.
