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August 30, 2023 37 mins

People around the globe have protected their skin using a variety of substances throughout history. In the 19th and 20th centuries, deeper understanding of sunlight and the way it affects skin led to more protective sunscreen formulations. 

Research:

  • Aldahan AS, Shah VV, Mlacker S, Nouri K. “The History of Sunscreen.” JAMA Dermatol. 2015;151(12):1316. doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2015.3011
  • Belmont, Trixie. “Suntans With Pay Off.” The Baltimore Sun. June 13, 1967. https://www.newspapers.com/image/377122417/?terms=%22franz%20greiter%22%20&match=1
  • Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Johann Wilhelm Ritter". Encyclopedia Britannica, 19 Jan. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Wilhelm-Ritter
  • Diffey, B. “Has the sun protection factor had its day?.” BMJ (Clinical research ed.) 320,7228 (2000): 176-7. doi:10.1136/bmj.320.7228.176
  • Greiter, F. and Gschnait, F. “EFFECT OF UV LIGHT ON HUMANS.” Photochemistry and Photobiology. 1984. 39: 869-873. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-1097.1984.tb08873.x
  • Hodgskiss, Tammy. “What the use of ochre tells us about the capabilities of our African ancestry.” The Conversation. Sept. 7, 2015. https://theconversation.com/what-the-use-of-ochre-tells-us-about-the-capabilities-of-our-african-ancestry-47081
  • “History of Hamilton.” https://www.hamiltonsunandskin.com.au/history-of-hamilton
  • Leach, Doreen, and Julie Beckwith. “The founders of dermatology: Robert WilIan and Thomas Bateman.” Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of London. Vol. 33, No. 6. November/December 1999. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9665792/pdf/jrcollphyslond146949-0084.pdf
  • MacEACHERN W.N. and O.F. JILLSON. “A Practical Sunscreen— ‘Red Vet Pet.’” Arch Dermatol. 1964;89(1):147–150. doi:10.1001/archderm.1964.01590250153027
  • Rathish, Shruthi, and Sebastian Criton. “Robert Willan – A True Pioneer.”  Department of Dermatology, Venereology and Leprosy, Amala Institute of Medical Sciences, Thrissur, Kerala,  April 22, 2019. https://jsstd.org/robert-willan-a-true-pioneer/
  • Rubin, Penny. “Only on Sun Days.” The Province. January 4, 1975. https://www.newspapers.com/image/501299818/?terms=%22franz%20greiter%22&match=1
  • “The science of sunscreen.” Harvard Health Publishing.  Feb 15, 2021. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-science-of-sunscreen
  • Skin Cancer Foundation. “Ask the Expert: Does a High SPF Protect My Skin Better?”May 1. 2023. https://www.skincancer.org/blog/ask-the-expert-does-a-high-spf-protect-my-skin-better/
  • “Sunscreen: How to Help Protect Your Skin from the Sun.” FDA. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/understanding-over-counter-medicines/sunscreen-how-help-protect-your-skin-sun#spf
  • “SUNSCREEN IN THE ENVIRONMENT:The History of Sunscreen's Effect on Corals.” Smithsonian Institute Oceans. https://ocean.si.edu/ecosystems/coral-reefs/sunscreen-environment
  • “Sun Tan Free, by the Inch.” The San Francisco Examiner. June 18, 1967. https://www.newspapers.com/image/458648765/?terms=%22franz%20greiter%22&match=1
  • Svarc, Federico. "A brief illustrated history on sunscreens and sun protection" Pure and Applied Chemistry, vol. 87, no. 9-10, 2015, pp. 929-936. https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2015-0303
  • Urbach, Frederick. “The historical aspects of sunscreens.” Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B: Biology. Volume 64, Issues 2–3. 2001.Pages 99-104. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1011-1344(01)00202-0.
  • Urbach, F. “Franz Greiter – The Man and His Work.” Photobiology. 1991. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-3732-8_82

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy, we're kind of
at the official end of summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Yeah,

(00:22):
but you know what, but sun protection year round. Yeah,
it's true. It's true. Everybody has that story of like
my cousin got the worst sunburn of their life in
December or something similar to that. Yeah, because the sun
it's still there, still there, You're still getting raise. I'm always,

(00:43):
you know, because I'm very pale person. I'm always thinking
about this. But I also had to chat with one
of my neighbors recently about my mowing clothes because I
go out in full coverage. I'm sure I look like
a crazy Victorian clown, which I don't care. We can
talk more about that on behind the scenes, but that

(01:05):
also got me and that neigh We're talking a little
bit about sun protection, which is, of course, as we
have been saying, very important. So I thought it might
be good to discuss how we got to the point
where nowadays you could buy SPF one hundred sunscreen. Certainly
not always the case. No, even in our lifetimes, we've
seen a lot of changes in sunscreen. Yeah. I feel
like when I was a kid, the max was like

(01:25):
fifteen mm hmm, and that seemed like, I don't know,
is that overkill? It is not out of my house.
So today we're going to talk about the history of
sunscreen a bit. And first we'll talk about some very
early sunscreen efforts and the ways that people around the
globe have protected their skin. And then we're going to
focus on the work in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

(01:47):
that developed sunscreen care for pale people like me, mostly
folks in Europe and North America, although there's an Australian
park that comes in there. And then we're going to
talk about some of the more recent developments in the field,
both good and bad. It's Sunscreen Day. On stuff you
missed in history class. It is it is, As is

(02:08):
often the case, we don't know precisely when people started
using sun protection. Most science papers about this mention that
since humans generally had dark skin when everyone was clustered
around the equator, melanin levels in their skin would have
made some kind of sun protection less of a priority.

(02:33):
I'll just take a moment to note some protection is
important for every everyone, regardless of their skin tone. We'll
talk about a little bit about why. Yeah. Yeah, So
as humanity spread out of that region, more people's skin
tones took on paler hues because the climates were cooler,

(02:56):
clothing became more full coverage, and so people, even though
they might have paler skin, they were getting less sun
exposure overall. Over time, skin pigmentation got less and less,
so at some point it became necessary to find ways
to fill the gap that was left by dropping melanin

(03:17):
levels in the skin. So that means in the one
hundred thousand years or so between three hundred thousand to
two hundred thousand BCEs, unclear exactly how much any of
our ancestors were really intentionally focusing on sun protection, but
that doesn't mean that it wasn't happening. There's evidence that

(03:39):
various groups of people in Sub Saharan Africa were using
ochre in a variety of ways, including the possibility that
was a sunscreen. There are still cultures today that use
ochre as sun protection. It does screen or block UV
radiation at least to a degree. Yeah, we don't really
get into it here today. One of the ways, even

(04:00):
if you're not trying to necessarily protect your skin with it,
it's entirely possible. People were using it around their eyes
to dull the glare of the sun, which can cause
harm to your eyes too. We also know that by
the year three thousand BCE, ancient Egyptians were taking care
of their skin in terms of its sun protection, using

(04:21):
things like jasmine, rice brand and plants related to blue bonnets.
The ancient Greeks often used olive oil on their skin
that has been determined in recent years to have an
SPF and we'll talk about SPF of eight at least
some versions of it that had been their go to
for skin care. It protected them from the sun, but

(04:42):
it was also used as a post sun moisturizer and
across the globe. In the following century, there are things
like mercury based cosmetics which whitened skin, and those became popular,
as we know in Japan as well as other countries.
Zinc oxide was in use on the Indian subcon as
a treatment for wounds and preventative from sun blistering as

(05:04):
early as five hundred BCE, and a paste made from
the bark of the elephant apple tree was used to
protect against the sun in Burma by at least one
hundred BCE, and we have known that the indigenous cultures
of the American continents have used a variety of natural
ingredients to create sun protection for their skin for thousands

(05:26):
of years. So putting various compounds on the skin to
protect it from the sun is not exactly new, But
actual sunscreen in the sense that we know of it
today didn't really come to be until the twentieth century.
To talk about sunscreen in the modern sense, though, we
need to talk about a handful of people who each
contributed a significant piece of the puzzle in the nineteenth century,

(05:49):
because there was a lot going on the science of
the sun and its effects on the skin was sort
of advancing piece by piece, And we said the nineteenth century,
which I set up Tracy to be a fibber, because
the first person we're talking about actually does some stuff
in the eighteenth century, and that's Robert Willen. He's often
called the father of dermatology. Willan was a Quaker who

(06:11):
was born in Yorkshire, England in seventeen fifty seven. He
went to Edinburgh, Scotland, for medical school, and then he
moved into a position as a physician at a public
dispensary in London, and this meant that he was mostly
working with the city's poorer residents and so he was
able to see a large number of people who came
in with skin conditions. Willan was the first person to

(06:33):
develop a classification system of skin diseases in Europe, based
on an arrangement in the style of Linnaeus. Before his work,
skin conditioned were treated in ways that usually involved a
lot of guesswork because nobody had made an organized effort
to document and compare a wide range of cases to
find their commonalities. He presented his initial work to the

(06:57):
Medical Society of London in seventeen ninety five, and in
seventeen ninety eight he started publishing a series of eight books.
Each volume covered one of the eight orders of skin
disease that he had identified, and though Willin died halfway
through this series, leaving only four of the planned eight
volumes behind, he did describe a condition that he called

(07:19):
ezema solayer solar ezma. Today you would see this often
called solar dermatitis, and this condition is more specific than sunburn.
It refers to an acute or chronic inflammatory reaction to sunlight,
so a sun allergy essentially, and while Robert Willan did
not know it at the time, he was describing a

(07:39):
condition that was a specific reaction to ultraviolet A, the
type of ultraviolet radiation we would call UVA. When most
people get a sunburn, that is a reaction to ultraviolet
B UVB light, and UVB is more associated with sunburn.
UVA has some other problems. This is kind of what
we were talking about when we said everybody use sunscreen.

(08:00):
Sunburn is not the only problem. You can have other
things going on. Willan's work was carried on though by
his student Thomas Bateman, who completed that book series and
further advanced the field of dermatological medicine. Just a few
years after Willin started publishing his classification of skin conditions,
a German chemist named Johann Wilhelm Ritter added another piece

(08:23):
to the scientific puzzle of sunlight and skin health. Ritter
was born on December sixteenth, seventeen seventy six, in Silesia
that was part of Germany at the time but it's
now part of Poland. He started working as a pharmacist
in seventeen ninety one, and after several years in that position,
he went to medical school. He also conducted a variety

(08:44):
of scientific experiments, including with the decomposition of silver chloride photography.
Buffs in the audience probably know that silver chloride is
a photosensitive compound and breaks down in sunlight, and that's
why it's used in black and white photography. In eighteen
oh one, Ridder realized during his experiments that silver chloride

(09:05):
broke down even faster in light beyond the violet end
of the visible spectrum than it did in the presence
of visible light. He had discovered the effects of ultraviolet light.
This came right on the heels of Sir William Herschel
discovering that there was light beyond the visible spectrum in
eighteen hundred, but it would still be a while before

(09:25):
the connection was made between UV light and sun damage
to the skin. Ritter moved on to working on experiments
in electricity and then died at the age of thirty three,
so he never realized just how important his discovery was.
It seems like we don't really know what he died

(09:45):
of concretely, was probably not directly an electrical accident. If
that came up as anybody in anybody's mind in the fossility. Yeah,
he's described as having generally poor health, and some people
have surmised that that may have been exacerbated by some
of the experiments he was doing, but we do not know.

(10:07):
Up until the early nineteenth century, the belief had been
that it was the heat of being out in the
sun that was causing skin irritation, so if you got
a sunburn, it's because you were baked. It was not
until eighteen twenty that Sir Everard Home made the case
that it was something other than just the temperature causing burns.

(10:29):
Home was born in Yorkshire in May seventeen fifty six,
and he did experiments that involved exposing one of his
hands to sunlight while covered with a black cloth and
noting that it did not get a sunburn, even though
it was actually several degrees hotter than it would be
without the cloth covering. And he exposed his other hand
uncovered as a control for the same period of time

(10:52):
and that hand did get a sunburn on it, So
to him, this was like, this is not a heat issue.
He also started to connect the idea of skin pigmentation
offering a degree of natural protection that really hadn't been
considered before. But it was still another seventy years before
anyone realized that UV radiation could be the source of

(11:12):
burning on the skin. That was the work of a
Stockholm botanist named Eric Johann Vidmark, who came to the
conclusion through his own experiments that quote the luminous rays
have only a subordinate effect on the process studied ie erythema,
and that therefore it must be accepted that the ultraviolet
rays have the overwhelming importance for these effects. He stated

(11:34):
that his experiments quote showed that the types of radiation
with the shortest wavelengths have an effect on the organism.
They appear to have the ability, independent of their heat energy,
to produce pathologic processes in the body surfaces which are
exposed to them in sufficient intensity. Both Vidmark and another
scientist by the name of Hammer, who worked in Stuttgart, Germany,

(11:58):
worked with quinine as a means of screening ultraviolet radiation,
and it does absorb UV light, keeping it from penetrating
to the skin at least to some degree. Hammer was
the first to assert clearly that a topical treatment might
work as a way to prevent sun damage. Writing quote
materials which prevent UVR from reaching the skin protect it

(12:19):
from erythema solaire. Coming up, we're going to talk about
how chestnut trees entered the sunscreen chat, but first we
will pause for a sponsor break. As an improvement on

(12:39):
the benefits of quinine as a screener of UV radiation,
the next substance to be tried for the same purpose
was eskalin, derived from horse chestnut trees, and this was
part of the work of Paul Gerson Unna, a German
doctor born in eighteen fifty in Hamburg. Doctor Una was
the first scientist to connect skin cancer and sun exposure

(13:01):
in the eighteen nineties, and he sought preventive substances that
could be applied to the skin. In nineteen eleven, Una
created and sold a topical lotion called Xeozon, which was
three percent escalin, and then he released a follow up
to that called ultra Zeison, which had seven percent. Soon,
similar experiments and products were being introduced by other doctors

(13:24):
and scientists with a variety of sunscreening ingredients. These included
tannin and an ointment suspension, and there was even an
experiment using prokine injected into the skin. That one was
obviously an experiment, not a marketed product. Throughout all of
this there were also analyzes of the problems in testing

(13:45):
the efficacy of any potential sunscreen. It's hard to test
across multiple subjects because different people have different levels of
sensitivity to sun exposure. It's hard to replicate sun exposure
even day to day if you're using the sun itself
as your source, because the weather changes, and if the

(14:05):
test compound isn't applied perfectly evenly, the results are going
to be mixed. So today we can create lab scenarios
that get around a lot of those issues, but in
the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, it's a
little trickier. Yeah, there is a whole paper where these
are being outlined, and it's like, okay, but like, it's
really hard to measure if subject A got the same

(14:28):
amount of sunscreen as subject B, and like if the
exact depth of its application is the same. And I
had not really thought about it, but I'm like, oh, yeah,
that would have been really hard though. Another development though
at the end of the nineteenth century, was the successful
synthesis of oxybenzone. This too was a German development. So

(14:50):
oxybenzone is found in some flowers, and it's a derivative
of benzophenone, and it is very good at screening UV
rays and it eventually ended up in a lot of sunscreens,
although it took several decades for that to happen. It
wasn't until the nineteen fifties that oxybenzone was recognized for
its potential in sunscreen use. But oxybenzone has some problems.

(15:13):
We're going to get to those leader in the episode.
Even though the concept of UV protection entered the picture
as a feature of products applied to the skin for
sun exposure, in the nineteen twenties, people were thinking more
about tanning. That started quite early in the twentieth century,
just after World War One. This was because in the

(15:34):
post war period in Europe and the United States there
was more cultural emphasis on doing fun things and engaging
in healthy outdoor activities, So having kind of a sun
kissed look became pretty popular for people with fair skin.
Sometimes this trend is credited to Coco Chanel because in
nineteen twenty pictures of her with a tan were published

(15:58):
after she got back from a cruise bakiation. Yeah, there
is one account that suggests that she invented sunbathing. Probably not,
but there was simultaneously an effort to focus on the
more protective angle of sunscreens. Joseph Maria Ada was a
Viennese chemist and he was born in eighteen fifty five.

(16:19):
His place in history is mostly related to photography because
he specialized in chemical development processes. But he noticed in
the course of his work that photographers often came down
with ailments that were likely related to the chemicals that
they worked with. So to get a better understanding of
the situation and perhaps improve it, he partnered with a

(16:40):
man named Leopold Frund, who was a radiologist born in
eighteen sixty eight to study those ailments, and one of
the things that they realized was that ultraviolet light was
causing skin damage in photographers and other people as well, presumably,
so they developed a product called Antelux to provide UV protection.

(17:00):
One of the ways that they demonstrated the efficacy of
their product was to use this cream that they created
to write the word and to luxe on the backs
of volunteers and then expose them to UV light, and
as the subjects developed sunburn or tan. The word stood
out in stark white against the sun affected areas. They
would take pictures of them. You can find them online.

(17:23):
I can't imagine wanting a corporate logo sunburned upon my back,
but this was a good way to show how effective
it was. Yeah, I want to avoid being sunburned in general. Yes.
In nineteen thirty two, Australian consumers had their first chance
to purchase a mass market sunscreen. I was created by
Adelaide chemist ha Milton Blake. Once Blake had a formula

(17:47):
that he thought would work, he tested it at the
University of Adelaide. He had that test done by our
professor named Kerr Grant. Testing showed that this was effective,
and Blake started Hamilton Laboratories, combining his first initials in
middle name. His sun screen used the compound phenl salicylate
as a sunscreening agent, and his company is still going today,

(18:10):
although now it's part of Key Pharmaceuticals. French pharmacist Eugene
Schuller was born in eighteen eighty one, and after receiving
his chemistry degree in nineteen oh four, he started making
hair color and distributing it to salons in Paris. That
hair color name is going to be familiar. It was Aurel,
so he was the founder of Looreal. By the end

(18:32):
of the first decade of the twentieth century, he had
founded a haircare company that eventually grew into Looreal, that
was not its original name. In the early nineteen thirties,
the successful Schuler started to sunbathe on his boat while traveling,
and he recognized the need for a product that would
care for the skin during sun exposure. The result was
a product called Ambre solaire, a sun tanning oil that

(18:55):
was advertised as protecting the skin. Schuller marketed it as
huil f, meaning filtering oil. It didn't really screen uvy
rays at the levels that we would seek out today,
but it did definitely provide a mullient moisture, and this
led to an entire industry of suntan oils. You can,
of course, still get suntan oil today, although modern versions

(19:19):
do provide at least a low SPF level of sunscreen.
Sun oil just does naturally offer a little sun protection.
Even olive oil, as we mentioned before, used by the
ancient Greeks as an SPF of roughly eight. The next
big step in the development of sunscreen came from Switzerland.
But this part of the story starts and then stops

(19:39):
for a little bit while some other things happened in
the background. It begins with Franz Grider, who was born
in Wittenberg Tyrel in the Austrian Alps in nineteen nineteen.
He became a chemist as a profession, but he was
also a mountaineer in his free time, and these two
combined to lead to advances in sunscreen. Grider often hiked

(19:59):
through the outl and on one particular climb of the
mountain called Pittsboen in nineteen thirty eight, he got a
really bad sunburn. He had been sunburned before while climbing,
but pitts Boen, which is in the Silveretta Mountain range
in the Alps on the Austria Switzerland border, is really
one of the higher mountains in the area. It's ten

(20:20):
eight hundred and sixty six feet or thirty three hundred meters.
Prolonged exposure in climbing, as well as the higher altitude
meant that he got a particularly bad sunburn. As he
was recovering, he decided he wanted to work on developing
something that could help climbers protect their skin while still
enjoying their mountaineering hobby, and could protect anybody else who

(20:42):
wanted to protect their skin from the sun. We're gonna
come back to him because he's gonna go away and
work in a lab. And meanwhile, World War II began,
German troops used doctor Una Zizon for sun protection. And
on the US side of things, one of the men
who enlisted to serve as an airmen was a pharmacist
from Miami named Benjamin Green, who was part of a

(21:04):
test of early sunscreens. Red veterinary petroleum, known more casually
as redvetpet, is petroleum product used to treat cuts and abrasions,
and it was part of airmen's first aid kits during
the war. Green and a lot of his fellow airmen
had a lot of issues with sunburns on missions and
would apply the red vetpet to their faces. This is

(21:26):
one of those things we're depending on the Sorcy read.
This is sometimes credited as though it was Green's idea,
but that is not the case. It was part of
a planned use for redvetpet by the military as part
of a test of sun protection pastes to manage the
scientific investigation of these pastes, the Army Air Force Material
Center contracted general electric lighting laboratories and researchers from the

(21:49):
Western Reserve Medical School, and that project, which was classified,
sought something that was inexpensive, non toxic, and stable at
variable temperatures. It could protect the skin of soldiers. Red
vetpet fit the bill, and it was selected by the
team for inclusion and emergency kits, and the red vetpet helped.

(22:10):
It was not exactly comfortable, though red vetpet is sticky
and heavy, it has an unpleasant odor. After the war,
back in his pharmacy, Green started to work on combining
the red vet pet with other ingredients to create a
lotion that would be less sticky and more appealing for
general use. So he added cocoa butter and coconut oil,

(22:32):
and that was the genesis of Coppertone brand suntan oil. Incidentally,
the Coppertone Girl that has become an iconic marketing figure
was not attached to the product until nineteen fifty three,
when the company hired Joyce Balentine to draw a new mascot.
Valentine used her three year old daughter Sherry as the

(22:53):
model for this little girl. Getting her swim bottoms pulled
on by a dog. Prior to the introduction of the
Copper Tone Girl, the company used the image of a
Native American person on the label. I'm just gonna say
that is not at all unique to Copper Tone No.
I just you know, it's like if you go back
and you look at historical bottles, you're like, this isn't

(23:16):
look the same. Now, where's the kid? That's where she is.
So we're going to talk again about Franz Greider, but
before we do, we will hear from the sponsors to
keep the show going. In nineteen forty six, Franz Greiter

(23:38):
once again appears, this time to bring the results of
his work to market, and that was in a product
called pittsbuen Gletscherkrem, which translates to glacier cream. This product
and others that he worked on, were developed alongside Greider's wife, Marga,
who is usually referred to as a beautician when you
read about them, but really she would be more likely

(23:59):
close to what we would call an esthetician in modern parlance.
She was an expert in skincare and skin health, so
together they wanted to not only meet consumer desires, for
getting a tan and preventing a sunburn, but also to
provide excellent skincare. The concept of SPF ratings came after

(24:20):
these early sunscreens, and that is another effort that's attributed
to Franz Griter, But to be clear, he did work
in the area and he helped popularize the concept of SPF,
but there had been other scientists before him working on
that idea. SPF, of course, means sun protection factor, and
it's a rating that shows how much sunburn protection a

(24:41):
product has. It's determined by testing that shows the amount
of UV exposure you would need to get a sunburn
when wearing the product versus when you are wearing nothing.
This is a thing that more modern discussions of make
very clear that this does not have to do with time,

(25:03):
but the amount of UV radiation hitting you. So the
higher the number, the better you're protected. But that rating
only applies to UVB rays, not UVA. Additionally, it's been
estimated that because of incorrect application, many users only really
get half the label value benefit of any sunscreens SPF.

(25:23):
This has led to calls from some researchers to scrap
SPF altogether in favor of a new, more accurate system.
That idea hasn't gotten any real traction, at least not
the tip market. Yet. We can talk more about why
the time thing has been repeated so much historically versus
how now they're saying amount of radiation. Initially, that is

(25:46):
what it was kind of marketed. As Grider continued to
work in the sunscreen field for decades. In nineteen sixty seven,
papers across the US and Europe ran headlines like suntands
with pay offered. The articles were all reporting on how
Grider was recruiting young women to be part of his
latest tests, and that came with a trip to Spain.

(26:10):
The chosen ladies would have their skin divided into squares,
with a different formula used on each section to see
how all of them performed. Grider was quoted as saying, quote,
good protection against the sun must also be good for
the skin. Besides aiding a quick tan, we are working
on the problem of how to avoid wrinkles forming while sunbathing.

(26:32):
I'm gonna tell you, Grider, that's not gonna work. He
particularly wanted redheads for the study quote because of their
sensitive skin. Even into the early nineteen eighties, Franz Greider
and his company were at the forefront of the developing
sunscreen science, introducing formulas, for example, that were broad spectrum

(26:54):
and water resistant, although by today's standards, as Tracy just hinted,
the protection protocols that were developed by his company then
are really woefully lacking. For example, in nineteen eighty one,
Pitts Bowen printed what was called the Tan Plan on
all of their packaging, and it suggested using a high
SPF product, meaning one with a six or eight rating

(27:15):
for several days of sun exposure before trading down to
a three or four SPF to ensure a perfect tan
because by that point your skin would be producing melanin.
We know that that's not enough, and at the time,
the SPF eight cream that was on the market was
like the big number, and it was touted as given

(27:36):
quote almost total screening to facial skin. Just a few
years before that, in nineteen seventy seven, the importance of
screening UVA rays was finally recognized. Prior to that, the
idea had been that because UVB rays were the ones
that caused sunburn, those were the ones most sunscreens focused on.

(27:58):
That enabled UVA rays to help sunbathers get the tans
that they wanted. But in the late nineteen seventies, scientists
realized that UVA rays were causing long term damage to
the skin. UVA rays make up ninety five percent of
UV radiation, and they can cause all kinds of problems,
including premature aging and indirect DNA damage that include skin cancer.

(28:23):
Right on the heels of this information regarding UVA, the
US Food and Drug Administration introduced sunscreen regulations and they
approved fourteen UV filters, meaning substances used in sunscreen products
that absorb UV rays and prevent them from penetrating through
to the skin. The most commonly used today are aminobenzoic acid, oxybenzone, avobenzone, octosalate,

(28:50):
and octocryline. The early nineteen eighties saw a huge jump
in SPF products, with the first SPF fifteen sunscreen introduced.
The decade of the nineteen eighties also saw the first
controversy surrounding a UV filter ingredient. Para aminobenzoic acid, referred
to on sunscreen labels as PABA. All caps began to

(29:12):
be reported as causing allergic reactions and more problematic was
found in one study to cause damage to DNA. It
wasn't banned by the FDA at that point. That didn't
happen for a long time, but a lot of companies
went ahead and reformulated their products to exclude paba as
an ingredient. Yeah. I remember when I was a kid,
my mom specifically looking for paba free and it was

(29:36):
because we thought that it was irritating my skin. I
was sensitive to some things, so wash. Another development in
the nineteen eighties was the introduction of colorful zinc oxide
products meant not to blend into the skin, but to
add some flair. This is important because it marks the
rise of a product different from sunscreen, and that's sunblock.

(29:59):
So sunblock includes either zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, both
of which reflect UV rays away from the wearer. All
the products we've mentioned before this are what would be
called sun's screen, meaning they absorb UV rays and prevent
them from getting to the skin. Franz Greider died in

(30:19):
nineteen eighty five at the age of sixty six. He
essentially worked right up until his death. His company, greid Ag,
was acquired by Johnson and Johnson in nineteen eighty nine.
It still exists and still sells sunscreen under the Pittsboo
and brand name in Europe. It wasn't until twenty seven
years ago, as we record this so nineteen ninety six

(30:41):
that avobenzone, which specifically protects against UVA rays, was introduced
to the market. Greider and others had been incorporating ingredients
into sunscreens that targeted UVB and offered some protection against EVA,
but this was the first that was really made specifically
to guard skin again UVA. Today, of course, you can

(31:03):
buy sunscreen that is rated SPF one hundred, as we
mentioned at the top of the episode, although the Skin
Cancer Foundation notes that outside of lab conditions, the reality
is that an SPF over fifty may give users a
false sense of security when really any product should be
reapplied every two hours or more often if you're engaging

(31:23):
in activities in the water or where you might sweat
a lot, yes, even if the label says they are
water and sweat resistant, so then the benefit of a
super high SPF is really only marginally better than something
rated SPF fifty. The one caveat here is for people
with extremely sensitive skin, or for example, if you have
albinism or some skin condition then go like all the

(31:47):
way is go for what you should always do every time. Yeah, yeah,
I think a lot of my like sport sunscreens say
on the label eighty minutes, Yeah, eighty minutes and sweat
or wet conditions. The development of sunscreen to protect human
skin has, according to a number of studies, come at

(32:08):
a cost to the environment. A lot of the ingredients
used in sunscreens have been identified over the years as
harmful to plant and animal life. That's particularly the case
in the kinds of places people are most likely to
slather themselves in sunscreen, which is beaches. Oxybenzone in particular
can wreak havoc and ocean ecosystems, particularly with coral. Hawaii

(32:33):
banned oxybenzone in twenty eighteen, as well as octinoxate. Other
areas known for the fun in the sun tourism have
done similar but there is ongoing debate about what really
is and is not safe in sunscreen when it comes
to the environment. And as you said, studies have been
conducted that show that oxybenzone and other ingredients cause problems

(32:56):
like coral bleaching and abnormal growth in corals, but other
studies indicate that it would be almost impossible to achieve
the levels that would cause those sorts of problems even
in waters that are filled with sunscreen slathered tourists. There's
also an additional complication here that messaging that suggests that
some sunscreens are not environmentally safe might cause people to

(33:19):
skip them, and that is of course also not safe.
At the individual level, people should be wearing sunscreen. There
have been some sunscreens to hit the market that taut
environmentally safe ingredients, although there is really not any regulation
around the terms you'll see on them, like refriendly or
others that are often used. So honestly, this is a

(33:41):
kind of ongoing and developing debate of what is refriendly
and reefsafe and whether or not any company should be
claiming that because we don't know, so polease always wear
your sunscreen. I beg, I beg. I wear so much
of it. I hate it. Maybe we'll talk about that.
I will talk about my favorite sunscreen. We are not

(34:04):
endorsed by it, but I love it, okay in our
behind the scenes, Yeah, yeah, you have some listener mail.
I do because it delighted me. So we have a
variety of delightful listener mail, We've had a lot of pets.
This one is not about pets. It's about marathons. And
this is from our listener Marcia, who writes, Dear Holly

(34:25):
and Tracy, I just finished your episode on the nineteen
oh four Olympic Marathon, and when you mentioned Cuban mail
carrier Felix's Carva Hall, it reminded me of my brother
in law, Mark, also a mail carrier for the USPS,
and his marathon experience. Like Carve Hall, Mark has always
been fit, but never professionally trained as a runner. He
played multiple sports all his life and was very good

(34:47):
at baseball and softball especially, but for him sports have
always been about fun times with people he enjoys. In
the late seventies, also at a time when hydration and
high tech shoes and clothing were still relatively unstudied, he
signed up for a fundraising event seemingly out of the blue.
He did no training for this full marathon, except to

(35:07):
run a half marathon the week before the race, just
to see if he had the stamina. Well, he finished
the race. That was his first and only full marathon,
and we can never get over how few side effects
he experienced the most he ever admitted, and only to
my sister Slash, his wife, was that over the next
few days delivering mail door to door, he chose to

(35:27):
step backwards down the doorsteps because it was less painful
for his very sore leg muscles. He is amazing and
a very humble example of a great human being. Thought
you would like an upbeat note after those campaign finance episodes.
I have been listening since the podcast was titled Factor Fiction,
so I earned my PhD before I even knew that
was a thing. Thank you for your excellent research, very

(35:48):
professional delivery, and vast range of topics, and your skill
at making sometimes complex topics very comprehensible. We no longer
have any pets Landlord's Rule, but I sure do enjoy
episodes on Famous Land. Sincerely, Marsha. I love this story
because I know exactly what that sensation is of not

(36:09):
wanting to go down steps. Like I have always said,
and I think a lot of people that do a
lot of sports and specifically running, will say when they're very,
very sore, they can walk up steps okay, But down
is a whole different story. And it's because like both
the bend of your knee and for a lot of
people I know. For me, like those muscles at the

(36:30):
back of your legs kind of at the base of
your glutes, are like, oh no, thank you. When you
try to do like the bends outs, I usually have
employed not a backwards maneuver because I'm too scared. I'll
do a sideways situation. But if you're stepping onto the
straight leg instead of a bent leg, it just makes
it easier for me and apparently many other people. Thank

(36:51):
you so much for this email. I too have had
friends that have done marathons with no training. That is
very scary to me. But if you're very it to
begin with, I don't recommend it, but I still think
you can get away with it, as clearly Mark did
and many others have say leaks. If you would like
to write to us about your lack of marathon training,

(37:11):
your pets, or anything else, you can do that at
History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us
on social media as missed in History, and if you
haven't subscribed to the podcast yet and you think you
want to, you can do that on the iHeartRadio app
or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you

(37:32):
missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Tracy Wilson

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