Considering that sunscreen in general is pretty garbage at blocking UVA, it isn't nearly as effective as traditional methods like a hat and a shirt.

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chimeracoder 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Considering that sunscreen in general is pretty garbage at blocking UVA, it isn't nearly as effective as traditional methods like a hat and a shirt.

While the US has no regulations around UVA protection, that's not true worldwide.

Europe and Australia both regulate the use of the term "broad spectrum". In Europe, that means the UVA protection needs to be at least 1/3 of the UVB protection to be able to use the term. I believe Australia is even stricter - all sunscreen is expected to have a baseline level of UVA protection.

Japan has PA ratings that go all the way up to PA++++ to specify the exact level of UVA protection.

1/3 the level of protection might sound like a significant difference, but it's not, especially since UVA is far less damaging than UVB is.

	▲	OneMorePerson 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Ah interesting, I suspected there might be some differences, unfortunate that the US hasn't made any regulation around that. Given the context of this post being a sunscreen scandal, do you know how UVA is tested? Someone earlier was saying that sunscreen is tested on humans and you see how long it takes to get burned, if that's the case and UVA doesn't burn you, I'd be curious how these UVA filtering claims are validated. Even among sunscreens that do a decent job filtering UVA the points in this article are still relevant: https://www.ewg.org/sunscreen/report/whats-wrong-with-high-s... Basically high SPF allows behavior thats somewhat unnatural. Someone with SPF 15 might get a tiny bit sun sensitive after a few hours and go back inside, where someone with SPF 50+ keeps going all day long and that might not be healthy.