Sunday, June 3, 2012

Flammable Sunscreen

I was bopping around on various websites yesterday, and took a peek at the FARK site -- which contains lots of strange headlines and silly stuff. I can't recommend it unconditionally, since some of it can get pretty tasteless (let's leave it at that) but now and then I check it out.

One article listed yesterday was given the FARK tongue-in-cheek title, "Man Badly Burned By Sunscreen".

I clicked through to the actual story, which included this:


.....He was at his lakefront home entertaining friends when he applied Banana Boat sport aerosol sunscreen.
     He says, “I sprayed on the spray-on sunscreen, and then rubbed it on for a few seconds. I walked over to my grill, took one of the holders to move some of the charcoal briquettes around and all of a sudden it went up my arm.”
     Brett says his body was on fire, “it went wherever the block went.
     Ten days later, his skin is still healing. The worst of the burns are around his neck.


You can read the entire article here, on the CBS Boston site.

I can't say as I found this headline, which FARK had tagged as "ironic", very funny. Especially since minutes before, I had generously sprayed myself with this:


Yeah. An aerosol sunscreen. Not Banana boat, as mentioned in the article, BUT a sunscreen with this warning on the back of the can:


See the word FLAMMABLE buried in there among all those other blue words?

Yikes.

As both a sjoggie AND now a person with lupus, I need to be using sunscreen. Every day. I like the aerosol versions because I am a lazy-butt and I have better success in adequately covering my skin with a spray than tediously rubbing the cream and lotion versions on. I know.....I know.....inhaling this stuff is probably not good. So I hold my breath.

But now? Maybe I should woman-up and ditch this easy-on version and break out the old fashioned lotions. Not that I routinely start up the grills around here but we do eat grilled foods pretty regularly, and although this is completely John's domain, I have been known to flip a burger or two over an open flame.

I'm going to have to either a) skip aerosol sunscreens altogether or, b) stay AWAY from the flame when barbecuing my next round of hotdogs.

 I wouldn't relish the idea of a large percentage of my skin surface catching ablaze. Snort.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

another thing to consider is whatever makes it flammable also may dry out your skin...beware of any aerosol sprays around fires like insect repellents, etc....my brother in law is a trauma surgeon & had a patient who was using a spray on jock itch treatment while smoking & well you can imagine the rest. Also, if you read up on travel tips you will come across info. advising you not to use hairspray or wear pantyhose or polyester or nylon type fabrics while flying...the hairspray will act like a lighter fluid & the fabrics will melt...anyway...I always use lotions & only use the spray on stuff if I'm at the beach& need to reapply...next time I'll look around & make sure no one is smoking nearby!

Amy Junod said...

Gads! Totally never thought about these products being flammable.
I too love the spray on kind. It sort of creates a "cloud" that covers every nook and cranny that my lotion might miss. I never thought about the drying aspects either.
Sigh.

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