Sunscreen.

Let's talk about sunscreen for a moment. Did you read the EWG's 2010 report of sunscreens? It's alarming. Perhaps their motivation is to alarm. Well done. I'm now completely freaked to put sunscreen on my body. On the plus side, I no longer feel bad about those trips to the park, the pool etc where I forgot to slather up my babes. 

I stopped using chemical sunscreens when I was pregnant the first time. The chemicals irritated my skin. I stuck to cold cream and moisturizer only. The same thing happened with #2. No sunscreens for me. 6 months postpartum I decided I needed to get back on the wagon and find some serious products to combat the dark circles, the lines and overall weariness of my skin. I looked for a product that promised to erase my lines and contained only physical sunblocks. Impossible. Even my old standby, Olay Sensitive ditched the zinc oxide and titanium oxide formula and is now a newly improved concoction of chemical sunscreens. I revised my strategy and settled for the products with the fewest chemical blockers. Avobenzone, Ovobenzone, Oxybenzone, Octisalate, what's the difference anyway. They all sound bad. 

According to this report, the real booger is Oxybenzone. Ok. I can avoid that. My baby's sunscreen Neutrogena Pure Baby contains no oxybenzone. Great, right? Nope. Apparently Vitamin A actually speeds up the development of skin cancers. Crap. It's in all the sunscreen products I purchased at my local drugstore, including the sunblock I had been diligently rubbing all over my kids.  But wait...this old bottle of Neutrogena sensitive seems ok. Nope it's full of other questionable ingredients, the question being, "We're almost certain it's bad for you but we haven't done a study to PROVE it, yet" Chuck that bottle in the trash, too. 

Working for an extremely 'green' firm New York, I developed what I consider healthy skepticism of consumer products. Vinyl, bad. Formaldehyde, bad. VOCs, BPA, Phalates...all bad. The firm made a commitment to only specify non-toxic materials.I realized that the rule in the US is to continue to use questionable products until they are proven to be harmful. So, in my own life I made an effort to use product that conformed to the EU standards of consumer protection. 

Flash forward a few years. I have two kids. It's nearly impossible to avoid mysterious plastics in the hose-it-down world of little kids, but I tried. When in doubt, we buy at IKEA. 

A few years in Texas and out of convenience I started buying beauty products at the drugstore. I really shouldn't have let my guard down. There is a reason we mostly shop at Whole Foods. I've now trashed all of our major brand sunscreens and resurrected those half-empty bottles of 'safer' products I purchased at Whole Foods but abandoned because they were too greasy, too chalky or too expensive. 

For the babies, I'm back on to California Baby sunblock...at $16-$22 a pop. And for my face, I'm trying Devita solar protection with micronized zinc oxide. These seem like the lesser of the evils. Our best protection this year will be hats and long sleeves, if we go out at all.