Slathering My Kids in Toxic Death Cream: A Mom Sick of Advice and Warnings

I’m afraid that this new scare about sunscreen (combined with the annual hype about skin cancer) is going to lead to “Well, gee, why don’t we just keep the kids inside and call it a day?”

Its all about the money, honey….fear begets profit. The more you can convince folks they need what you are selling or something bad will happen….even just a book listing off those bad things, well that equals money in the bank. Fear is big business. Frankly, the idea of smearing a chemical laden substance all over my kids (or myself) then putting us all out in the sun to bake it right in?? No thanks….Ive never used sunscreen and I dont put it on my kids. Ever.

Our bodies are AMAZING sources of complex healing, immunity, regeneration and protection…..weve just started screwing with them SO much, that they cant do what they are built to do anymore. Herein lies the cycle. Add in a healthy dose of entitlement (we shouldnt have to ever get sick, we shoudlnt ever have to have a sunburn etc.) Well….then people start expecting or even demanding to be healthy. Its my RIGHT! Why isnt my body cooperating?? Im a healthcare provider, and I see it all the tim

Here’s a link to how horrifically wrong ewg.org is, who are the latest scare mongers about sunscreen.

https://www.activistfacts.com/organizations/113-environmental-working-group/

Just to follow-up with my post, a most recent health article I was reading condemned carbonated water such as Perrier water and LaCrois, which I drink all the time (because drinking water is healthy for you), as unhealthy for your teeth, particularly the flavored carbonated waters. It said that persistent consumption of carbonated water will cause your teeth to rot.

I have been drinking Perrier and LaCrois for years and years and years because for me anyways, these type of beverages make consuming water more palatable and tolerable compared to the conventional out of the faucet stuff. I also have not had a cavity in 20 years and my kidneys are in great shape! My teeth are also whiter than average. Probably because I brush my teeth on a regular basis? I mean, won’t the consumption of steamed vegetables also cause your teeth to rot IF you never brush them?

Next thing you know there’s gonna be an article that says, “A recent study found that athletes who drink ice cold water following a vigorous workout were found to gain an average of 7 lbs. per year and had higher rates of cancer compared to athletes who drank 64 oz. of luke-warm water following the same vigorous workout who lost an average of 10 lbs. per year and lived 5 years longer.”

That’s right folks, drinking lots of water is not sufficient enough unless we’re miserable drinking it!

At the pool now and just listened to a mom lecturing her kids about how sunscreen can disrupt growth, is filled with all kinds of horrible chemicals, etc. Really, she wasn’t lecturing her kids so much as itching for a fight with a nearby mom who sprayed sunscreen on her own kid’s face.

The problem with these scary sounding articles is how many people use them to loudly criticize other people’s parenting choices. I know I took a good look at her so I could be sure to stay far away once we got into the pool.

Why use sunscreen at all then? Isn’t the whole skin cancer scare nothing but fear-mongering hysteria, created to judge us and make us feel guilty? After all, our parents/grandparents etc. didn’t use sun-screen and they were just fine. They just want to sell us stuff. Speaking of which, do you know what is the most important thing to sun-screen companies? Profit. Not your child’s health. So I’m glad somebody went through the trouble of looking into sun-screen toxicity and shared that information with me. I’m going to use it to my advantage, not be annoyed about it.

Free range parenting is about raising our children to be independent and self-sufficient and giving them plenty of opportunities and space to practice these skills. I don’t see how having access to information about how unscrupulous companies can profit at the expense of our and our children’s health (among other things) stands in the way of that. People who live in fear of being judged have a problem. I make my decisions based on what’s best for my family, not what someone else might think.

@TheOtherAnna:

Well, I don’t think a sunburn is good for ANYBODY let alone a kid. At age 60 I just had a basal carcinoma removed from my right shoulder and I don’t think it’ll be the last. That could be attributed to the fact that I’m of fair complexion and used to be a lifeguard back when I was age 19 thru 25 and received numerous sunburns because I was too stubborn to put on sunscreen because I was convinced I was gonna get as brown as a person from central India!

Perhaps allow your child a few minutes in the sun without sunscreen which would allow his body to produce vitamin D, but after that, I’d cream him up with it and I wouldn’t be picky about the brand. Just so it has a high SPF value.

Worrying about sunnscreen? Heaven forbid. …we lather it on our kids and ourselves down here, mostly thanks to the hole in the Ozone layer (which sounds like a fairy tale itself, now I think about it, but which is a painful reality ☺). Our annoying PSAs tend to be more along the lines of ‘You’re not using enough! You should be going through a $20 family sized bottle every 3 days!’ Which we certainly don’t. …haven’t got the money to waste on

One thing that helps is to stay off the internet. (I’m totally aware of the irony of saying that in the comment section of a parenting blog!). But all this scare-mongering and judging of parents seems to mostly exist online and, to a lesser extent, on tv. When I am with actual parents, doing actual things with our actual kids, most people seem pretty normal. Reasonable, non-judgy. And I spent 2 years of my son’s life in Manhattan, which is supposedly the epicenter for crazy judgemental helicoptering. I mean, we all do have that one parent in our social circle who is terrified of everything, but they were around when I was a child, too. They just didn’t blog about it.

@John and Emily, the one I love is “don’t drink diet soda because it triggers your sweet tooth and causes you to crave suar and eat more.” Well, it doesn’t if you’re being conscious about your food intake, and if you don’t feel you have to give in to every single craving!!!

I recognize that there are other issues with diet soda, and I don’t drink it myself (but I do drink flavored water OH NO), but this was one of the first messages trying to make people fearful about it.

@Lollipoplover–I just read that article, and there’s no mention of reading logs; it just says to read to your kids, and encourage reading, at times when you might be reading already, like reading the newspaper at breakfast, reading stories to younger kids at bedtime (and encouraging older kids to read on their own), maybe packing a book or two to read during quiet times at the cottage (no WiFi, and surely it rains there sometimes, and sometimes it’s nice to read on the dock while taking a break from swimming). I actually think that that’s good advice. I mean, by encouraging (and modelling) this kind of reading, and allowing kids to pick what they want to read, you’re showing them that reading can be fun, even (or especially) when you don’t get graded on it.

@Emily – I just read that article, too. Of course it assumes that a parent is actually concerned that their child is struggling with reading, and that they believe that something can be done about it (and should be done).

If one has adopted a fatalistic attitude about such things, then it’s easy to not worry if one’s kid can read or not. Hey, summer vacation is for parents, too!

@Jason–I see your point about the “struggling with reading” part of the equation. I might have missed that, or written it off as “background noise,” but now I think it’s important. I think there’s a difference between encouraging ALL kids to read, and encouraging those who struggle with reading, to read. I never had a problem with reading as a kid (in fact, my parents sometimes had the opposite problem with me; I’d stay up late and read and not get enough sleep, or I’d want to read to the exclusion of outdoor play), but singling just one child out for mandatory ANYTHING, is a great way to make that kid hate whatever the mandatory activity is. I mean, sometimes, this can’t be avoided; like if one child has to study for a test for school, or one child needs braces or glasses, and the other one doesn’t, but with reading, it’s so easy to just keep books around the house, or say, “Today, we’re all going to the library,” or to tuck a Chapters gift certificate into a birthday card or Christmas stocking in addition to the child’s main gift. I was “singled out” as a child for other reasons–I was overweight, so my parents would put me on diets, but not my brother, because he wasn’t overweight, or my dad would force me to practice math with him (beyond the crap-ton of math homework I’d get in high school) because I wasn’t good at math, but not my brother, because he was younger and therefore doing easier math in school. The reverse happened sometimes too–my brother was very ill as an infant and toddler, and was repeatedly hospitalized for hernia operations and croup, while I had no such problems, and he later needed braces, while I didn’t, and he had to be goaded into swimming lessons and music practice, while I did both willingly. But, I get it–there’s a BIG difference between “Let’s all go to the library!”; and “Sam, you HAVE to read for 20 minutes before going outside to play with Sarah.” Also, every kid is different–you could have two kids in the same family, and for one child, you might say, “Sam, if you finish a whole book by the time school lets out, we’ll buy you a pass to the community pool so you can go swimming whenever you want”; while to the other child, it might be, “Sarah, if you earn your swimming badge, we’ll take you to the bookstore and let you pick out the book of your choice.” To me, both reading and swimming are innocuous, positive activities, but that’s not the case for everyone, and attaching a “must” to a disliked activity (regardless of what that activity is) can make it worse for someone, especially a child.

I bought passes to the nearby water park on the suggestion of my SiL who was practically raised by the water park. Took my girls there, held the baby, let the 3-year-old run around with strange kids. I did not put sunscreen on them. I like sunscreen well enough, but, well, I had left the bottle in my husband’s car and I didn’t want to pay for more and my girls’ skin apparently comes from the Native American genetic strain on their dad’s side. We survived. Oh, and another mom helped my daughter up when she fell down in the kiddie pool (big whoop) and I thanked that mother and she said of course and it was just a lovely sense of community.

As for summer reading… I’m a teacher. I’m not doing a darn thing concerning education that isn’t adding to my TeachersPayTeachers shop for spending money and no, I don’t expect a single student to spend his summer doing random worksheet crap.

@lollipop
That is really interesting, about the relationship between the ads and the content.

Right. When I need professional child rearing advice, the first person I think of is that drooling idiot on my immediate left.

When it comes to parenting, I have adopted what I call the “strong atheist” position: I don’t know with absolute certainty how to make my children safe, comfortable, and fulfilled AND YOU DON’T EITHER!

I stand with Sara, and Lenore, and all the other real parents who would rather raise children than play-act at raising children for the approval of the madding crowd. So stop getting all up in my face with some stupid rule you never even heard of until you read it on the internet five minutes ago.

And wipe that drool off your chin.

@Emily-

I brought up reading logs as my own personal rant. I am so entirely sick of them and lie on them regularly.
Not that my children don’t read. 2 out of 3 are avid readers. The boy would rather have a dental procedure than read a book for leisure, but enjoys hobby books like how to make your own fishing lures and other outdoorsy crafts. He has assigned reading for the summer…and knowing him, he will wait until right before school to read those books and I’m fine with that.

As Jason said, it’s this fatalistic view that a struggling reader needs to have a plan of action and can’t get a break. I think they need the break (and summer adventures provide good sources of writing topics for next year)!

To Anne, Anna, whoever….the writer isn’t saying she doesn’t want to use sunscreen. She wants to use the sunscreen she already bought and paid for (and probably not of dubious quality bought from street-corner sunscreen hustlers), without having to extensively research what horrible effects this sunscreen will have on her children, then research whether or not her first research has any credibility and is peer-reviewed, and then more research because that’s apparently what moms are supposed to do.

If that’s how you do it, then it’s the right choice for you. It’s not the right choice for others.

For fun, I did a search for “toxic sunscreen” and found an article that declared the Environmental Working Group had released a list of recommended sunscreens and ones that failed to meet their standards. So I went over the the EWG’s web site (I do these things so y’all don’t have to suffer. You can thank me via small unmarked bills). If you don’t want to read the wall of text, let’s just say “Worst Case Thinking On Display!” would be a good headline. It’s not just for paranoid parents anymore! Like most of the junk put out by those who think they know best, its filled with junk science clothed in righteous indignation to push their particular agenda. If the EWG didn’t release this paper, they would have been just another two-bit environmental special interest who couldn’t find their way out of a (eco-friendly biodegradable recyclable) wet paper bag. Instead, they get headlines because “if it bleeds, it leads.”

First, the EWG hates spray-on sunscreens, because of the inhalation hazards as well as the possibility one may miss a spot or apply too little. Well, yes, that is possibility. Much like it’s possible to miss a spot because my six year old is trying to run towards the water and not stand still so I can properly apply the lotion-style sunscreen. And of course there is no inhalation hazard of, say, the water at the beach. Trust me, your precious snowflake is not going to get high from a whiff of propellant from the spray-on sunscreen.

Then, they are not happy that oxybenzone is an active ingredient in many sunscreens because it penetrates the skin, acts like estrogen, can trigger allergic reactions, and there are inconclusive studies that link high concentrations to health disorders. Of course, the American Academy of Dermatology still recommends the ingredient because our skin is actually really good at keeping stuff OUT of our body. And yes, high concentrations of almost anything can lead to health problems. You will die if you breathe too much oxygen, you will die if you drink too much water, and we really like gravity until we start falling out of an airplane.

Retinyl palmitate is another “dangerous chemical” that “may speed the development of skin tumors and legions, according to government studies.” Of course, there’s that pesky “may” in the quote that kinda makes the whole thing smell of the stuff that’s usually found in a baby’s diaper. Retinyl palmitate is bascially vitamin A (retinol) reacted with palm oil. I don’t know why it’s added to sunscreen (I would guess that it’s better to have the sun degrade the retinyl palmitate rather than the photo-sensitive chemicals in your skin, but I’m not expert), but again there are plenty of actual real scientists who say retinyl palmitate is just fine.

The EWG did happen to put out this big report, along with a request for donations, so there’s that. Nothing helps get the money flowing in like saying “OH MY GOD WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE.” At the bottom of the page there’s this little sentence: “The ratings reflect potential health hazards but do not account for the level of exposure or individual susceptibility, factors which determine actual health risks, if any.” For the uninitiated, it means that “we dosed lab rats with the equivalent of 8000% of the exposure a human might get in a lifetime, and it turns out the rats died.” Except, being an environmentally-friendly group, they couldn’t use real rats, so they probably settled for the fake rubber kind and were shocked (shocked!) to discover none of those rats had a pulse at the end of the study.

Here in Ireland, it is overcast and raining 90% of the time. Sun usually strikes by suprise, when we are on an outing, having packed up the raingear and woolly hats. In this case, I would go to the nearest petrol station and buy whatever sunscrean they have, being aware that it is not the super-duper-organic brand (though I’d like to invest in that, but I’m just not organised enough for it). It won’t kill and it is certainly better than wearing no sunscrean.

I loved her article!