I've found that wearing SPF 50 is way too much for me, even in the tropics. SPF20 and being careful and seeking shade after a while is sufficient. Remember SPF 20 means you can stay in the sun 20 times longer than normal!
Trying to figure out whether this action was triggered by the investigation by the Australian magazine Choice, which found most Australian sunscreens were much worse than claimed.
There's just this weird statement at the bottom of the page:
> The Consumer Council reserves all its right (including copyright) in respect of CHOICE magazine and Online CHOICE
But, it seems very prone to inducing overconfidence… It has to be reapplied more than you expect. You need more of it than you expect. It is less waterproof than you expect.
I mean, to preemptively retreat to the obviously defensible position: I’m not saying it is negative, but it is better to just cover up and avoid staying in the sun for too long, right?
This is a topic where the details matter a lot. A sunscreen which is labeled SPF 50 but performs at SPF 45 is such a minimal difference that it would be impossible to notice in the real world. The variance of your application technique and applied thickness would actually matter more. There is also a lot of testing variability, so if a sunscreen rated to block 98% of certain rays only gets 97% in the test that would be acceptable in the real world, but it would get counted for this clickbait headline.
If a sunscreen comes with a high SPF rating and performs close enough in random testing (which is hard to replicate) then I wouldn’t have any concerns in the real world.
The body of the article has some more details about how the number of majorly deficient brands was much smaller, but that makes for less clickbaity headlines:
> The measured sunscreen efficacy of 4 models were below SPF15, of which 2 were sunscreen products with very high protection i.e. labelled with SPF50+
Knowing which 2 brands were labeled SPF 50 but performed below 15 would have been helpful, but the article is not helpful.
I suspect that in X years we'll learn that sun is not bad for us while the chemicals we apply to our skin are problematic.
What I find personally works is to build up a base tan. I probably did a little sunscreen application back in May but just spend a lot of time outdoors so by the time it got really sunny I had enough tan that I didn't need sunblock to not get burnt.
Even my wife who is very light and "can't tan" - I saw a picture of her when she was a lifeguard in highschool - she's bronze and probably wouldn't need sunblock either.
Obviously people make money when you buy sunscreen so the message that you don't need it doesn't get a lot of amplification.
I know ultraviolet CCD sensors exist and are probably expensive, specialty scientific equipment. I've kinda had this hope that one smartphone manufacturer (any of the big ones) would go to the trouble of including a UV camera and drive costs down. On the one hand you can market a unique and fun photography tool that lets you see the world in a different way. And then in the more serious part of the commercial, you show friends at the beach taking UV pictures of each other after applying sunscreen and one person says "You missed a spot right there, mate."
Plus I'd imagine you could immediately tell if your sunblock were BS and do an even better job of holding these folks accountable. You and buddy of similar skin tone both buy SPF 50 and apply it, take pictures, and see that one of you is not as well protected.
Independent lab testing of consumer packaged goods is so important, expensive, unprofitable, and downright risky from a libel standpoint that I dare say it should be the role of government to do it.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 45.0 ms ] threadhttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gzl41rpdqo
The original CHOICE investigation names brands & products:
https://www.choice.com.au/health-and-body/beauty-and-persona...
There are brands like Neutrogena that have passing & failing products, suggesting a process issue.
Lots of sunscreen brands should also be avoided as they contain allergy inducing-, hormone altering- or environment damaging- ingredients.
Not easy making a good choice.
I only use SPF 50 for my nose.
There's just this weird statement at the bottom of the page:
> The Consumer Council reserves all its right (including copyright) in respect of CHOICE magazine and Online CHOICE
A sunscreen scandal shocking Australia
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45145624
But, it seems very prone to inducing overconfidence… It has to be reapplied more than you expect. You need more of it than you expect. It is less waterproof than you expect.
I mean, to preemptively retreat to the obviously defensible position: I’m not saying it is negative, but it is better to just cover up and avoid staying in the sun for too long, right?
If a sunscreen comes with a high SPF rating and performs close enough in random testing (which is hard to replicate) then I wouldn’t have any concerns in the real world.
The body of the article has some more details about how the number of majorly deficient brands was much smaller, but that makes for less clickbaity headlines:
> The measured sunscreen efficacy of 4 models were below SPF15, of which 2 were sunscreen products with very high protection i.e. labelled with SPF50+
Knowing which 2 brands were labeled SPF 50 but performed below 15 would have been helpful, but the article is not helpful.
What I find personally works is to build up a base tan. I probably did a little sunscreen application back in May but just spend a lot of time outdoors so by the time it got really sunny I had enough tan that I didn't need sunblock to not get burnt.
Even my wife who is very light and "can't tan" - I saw a picture of her when she was a lifeguard in highschool - she's bronze and probably wouldn't need sunblock either.
Obviously people make money when you buy sunscreen so the message that you don't need it doesn't get a lot of amplification.
Plus I'd imagine you could immediately tell if your sunblock were BS and do an even better job of holding these folks accountable. You and buddy of similar skin tone both buy SPF 50 and apply it, take pictures, and see that one of you is not as well protected.
A sunscreen scandal shocking Australia - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45145624 - Sept 2025 (110 comments)
Insanely so for the relatively light dusting spray sunscreens do even in the best of circumstances https://labmuffin.com/do-sunscreen-sprays-actually-work-the-...