Looking for a safe sunscreen product? There’s an app for that

Need sunscreen?

There’s an app for that.

Unfortunately, the app doesn’t actually provide protection from harmful UVA and UVB rays (I think that’s in the next upgrade).

But if you have an Apple iPhone or iTouch, you can download the 2010 Sunscreen Guide app from the Environmental Working Group (EWG). Then, when you’re standing in the sunscreen aisle at your drugstore, looking at the bewildering number of brands to choose from, you can just punch up the EWG app and check details on more than 500 products.

This app is based on the EWG 2010 sunscreen product report I told you about in “Step Into the Light.” This year’s report contains disturbing results from an animal study conducted by EWG. Researchers determined that a vitamin A derivative called retinyl palmitate (a common ingredient in many sunscreens) may increase skin cancer growth.

Time will tell just how much risk is posed by retinyl palmitate exposure. But in the meantime you can easily avoid it by checking the EWG sunscreen product guide.

If you don’t have an iPhone or iTouch, no problem–EWG offers two other “apps.”

You can access the Sunscreen Guide for free on their website (ewg.org). Or you can make a donation and they’ll send you a Sunscreen Guide “bag tag” that you can take along to the store for easy reference. It’s a revolutionary technology: words printed on paper!

What will they think of next?

To Your Good Health,

Jenny Thompson