Sun Safety for Kids After Labor Day
The start of the school year doesn’t mean the end of sunscreen season for kids. “Counting both recess and sports, children still spend plenty of time outdoors in the fall, and you need to make sure their skin is protected,” says Marvin M. Lipman, M.D., Consumer Reports’ chief medical adviser. While the sun’s burning ultraviolet (UV) B rays become less intense in the fall, getting a sunburn remains a risk and the UVA rays that penetrate skin more deeply and damage collagen and elastic tissue are present year-round. That's why it's important to think about sun safety for kids throughout the year.
You don’t need a special kids’ sunscreen; such products aren’t safer or more effective than regular sunscreens. Still, it’s good to know how well products that are labeled as being for kids work—especially if the sunscreen bottle itself is meant to appeal to children. Pure Sun Defense fits that bill—the bottles feature characters from "Frozen," "Despicable Me," "Marvel Avengers," and other popular cartoons—and hit the market just this past spring.
In our tests, Pure Sun Defense SPF 50 lotion provided excellent UVA and UVB protection. With a score of 98, it matches the performance of Coppertone Water Babies SPF 50 lotion, a kids’ sunscreen that’s done consistently well in our tests over the years. Pure Sun Defense had a barely-noticeable aroma and left a little tackiness on the skin. At $6.00 for an 8-ounce bottle (that’s 75 cents an ounce) it’s one of the least expensive sunscreens in our tests.
The active ingredients in both Pure Sun Defense and Coppertone Water Babies sunscreens are the chemicals avobenzone, homosalate, octisalate, octocrylene, and oxybenzone. Some parents are concerned about using chemical-based sunscreens on children, and prefer to use a mineral sunscreen. Also known as natural sunscreen, a mineral sunscreen contains only titanium dioxide, zinc oxide, or both. However, our tests have found that mineral sunscreens, while providing some protection, don't shield skin from the sun’s rays as well as those that contain chemicals.
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