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Comment by easyat | Hacker News Reader

Lightweight clothing covering your skin is the best way

Unfortunately my hands, feet, neck, and ears sunburn easily, and can’t really be covered when swimming or on the beach, so a sunscreen is still needed

Zinc oxide for the best protection, titanium dioxide for less oil, less visibility, and less irritation of skin acne. At least 8% content for both. If you want to go expensive, La Roche-Posay Anthelios 60, if you want to go cheap try Coppertone Water Babies SPF 50 or Equate Ultra Protection SPF 50. Reapplying every few hours is important.

This is gold, thank you

beware with La Roche-Posay line! Well, most mega corp cosmetic chem corps have this exact same problem.

They use the exact same brand/package design/names for completely different products, depending on where you are.

For example, USA you get "Anthelios 60 Mineral", with 8% Ti dioxide and 6% zinc ox. In the EU you get 6% Ti diox and 12% zinc ox. In south america you get Oxybenzene and no minerals :shrug

Now, guess which one you will end up getting on the cheaper listings on amazon even in the USA.

It absolutely is not. Thin clothing is bad at blocking UV. For example, a cotton t-shirt blocks 41% of UVA and 40% of UVB. That's like wearing SPF 1.7 sunscreen, i.e., you're getting twenty times the UV exposure you'd get wearing bare-minimum SPF-15 sunscreen.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4414538/

I am extremely sensitive to the sun and have NEVER been sunburned through a t-shirt or other layer of clothing. I still think it's a valid defense.

I've been sunburned through a linen shirt (white color shirt and lightweight).

Did you just take two random numbers from that paper without reading any of it?

Their black cotton shirt blocked >99% of both UVA and UVB and the white one roughly 90%.

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