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By Monica Amarelo and Paul Pestano
Sun safety is a crucial part of any outdoor activity for kids, and sunscreen can help protect children's skin from harmful ultraviolet rays. Kids often get sunburned when they're outside unprotected for longer than expected. Parents need to plan ahead and keep sun protection handy in their cars or bags.
Just a few serious sunburns can increase a kid's risk of skin cancer later in life. They don't need to be at the pool, beach or lake to get too much sun. Their skin needs protection from the sun's harmful rays whenever UV peaks.
A baby's best defense against sunburn is to avoid the sun or stay in the shade. For babies younger than six months old, physical barriers are best—clothing, hats, pop-up tents and umbrellas.
For children older than six months, an effective sunscreen, applied liberally and frequently, is an important part of a parent's sun safety toolkit.
By and large, the sunscreens that perform well in Environmental Working Group's (EWG) 2017 Guide to Sunscreens are mineral-based products with zinc oxide and/or titanium dioxide as the active ingredients. These products protect against both UVA and UVB rays, but watch out for products that have low percentages of these active ingredients, as they may contain other ingredients that boost the SPF on the label without actually protecting from other skin damages.
Parents need to be mindful that certain ingredients in sunscreen could pose safety concerns, including retinyl palmitate, a form of vitamin A that is linked to sun sensitivity, and oxybenzone, a hormone disrupter.
Steer clear of sunscreen products with an SPF more than 50. Use sunscreen with at least SPF 15 and broad spectrum protection when your child goes outside. For the best protection, apply sunscreen generously 15 minutes before going outdoors and reapply at least every two hours. You should reapply sunscreen after sweating, getting wet or towel drying. Don't forget to protect ears, noses, lips and the tops of feet.
Last but not least, avoid aerosol sprays. They provide inadequate skin coverage because they don't provide a thick and uniform coating on the skin. And kids can inhale spray products.
Choosing the right sunscreen from the hundreds of products lining store shelves can be daunting. EWG researchers came up with a list of 14 worst-scoring sunscreens for kids:
2018 saw a number of studies pointing to the outsized climate impact of meat consumption. Beef has long been singled out as particularly unsustainable: Cows both release the greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere because of their digestive processes and require a lot of land area to raise. But for those unwilling to give up the taste and texture of a steak or burger, could lab-grown meat be a climate-friendly alternative? In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers from the Oxford Martin School set out to answer that question.
By Gary Paul Nabhan
President Trump has declared a national emergency to fund a wall along our nation's southern border. The border wall issue has bitterly divided people across the U.S., becoming a vivid symbol of political deadlock.
By Daniel Ross
Hurricane Florence, which battered the U.S. East Coast last September, left a trail of ruin and destruction estimated to cost between $17 billion and $22 billion. Some of the damage was all too visible—smashed homes and livelihoods. But other damage was less so, like the long-term environmental impacts in North Carolina from hog waste that spilled out over large open-air lagoons saturated in the rains.
Hog waste can contain potentially dangerous pathogens, pharmaceuticals and chemicals. According to the state's Department of Environmental Quality, as of early October nearly 100 such lagoons were damaged, breached or were very close to being so, the effluent from which can seep into waterways and drinking water supplies.
Tourists Are Trashing the World’s Tallest Mountain, So China Has Banned Them From Its Base Camp
China has closed its Everest base camp to tourists because of a buildup of trash on the world's tallest mountain.