Bridget's Green Living: More info on safe sunscreen

Friday, July 9, 2010

More info on safe sunscreen

I have continued my search for safe, effective and easy to find sunscreen lotions. My last recommendation, I was disappointed to learn, wasn’t that easy to find after all. (It had almost identical packaging with two readily available Coppertone products so I was initially duped). I have now replaced our family sunscreen with the following brands that are very easy to find locally:

Coppertone Water Babies (the pink bottle) offers excellent UVB protection, good UVA protection, excellent stability (doesn’t breakdown in the sun) and has a low/moderate toxicity rating of 3. Be sure to buy the cream, not the aerosol. This is by far the easiest sunscreen to find and is great for people of all ages (not just kids).

My best find yet is the Badger Sunscreen Face Stick. It offers good UVB coverage, excellent UVA protection, excellent stability and a low toxicity rating of 1. Look for this at your local eco or health food store.

Another I researched but haven’t tried is La Roche-Posay Anthelios 45 (not the 60). It also has a toxicity rating of 3, excellent UVB & UVA protection and excellent stability. Be forewarned - it's pricey (over $20 for a small tube)/ Look for this at Shoppers Drug Mart.

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Tips: cellphone safety

-Buy a low-radiation phone. Look up your phone, or search for a new phone, in this handy guide. (Check under your battery for the model number.)

-Use a headset or speaker. A headset emits much less radiation than your phone and using speaker phone mode keeps that radiation away from your head.

-Less radiation is emitted when you're texting compared to talking, and texting keeps the radiation away from your head.

-Stay off the phone if you don’t have a strong signal. Your phone will emit even more radiation when it’s working hard to get the signal to the tower.

-Limit children’s phone use. Young children’s brains absorb twice the cell phone radiation as an adult’s.

Tips: Steer clear of bottled water

Fill water bottles at home before you head out on a road trip. Even if you’re just out and about for the afternoon.
Make sure you have enough bottles for everyone in your family (and maybe a couple of extras).
Bring an empty bottle with you when you travel. Fill it from the bathroom tap in your hotel room (so you’re not buying the expensive bottle of water in the room and can steer clear of plastic.)
Buy a carbon filter for your kitchen tap if you don’t like the taste of your tap water. Or buy a filter jug to keep in your fridge.
At restaurants ask for tap water if they offer bottled water.

Tips: Packing eco-friendly lunches:

- Reduce (or eliminate) prepackaged foods.

- Pack food in reusable containers.

- Pack stainless-steel spoons and forks. (Plastic utensils can’t be recycled).

- Use stainless steel water bottles.

- Only use plastics with 1, 2, 4 or 5 on them (inside the recycling symbol). These are food-safe numbers & recyclable.

- Don’t put food items in any containers marked #7. (It contains Bisphenol A, a hormone disruptor banned from baby bottles.)

- Don’t heat food in plastic containers, no matter what number is stamped on it.

- Reuse plastic sandwich bags & then recycle them.

- Better yet, use plastic containers and fabric snack bags instead.