What does 'broad spectrum' mean?Updated 8 months ago
Sunlight contains a mix of electromagnetic radiation - you'll have heard of UV, visible and infrared rays. Overexposure to UVA rays and UVB rays can lead to skin cancer. In addition to causing skin cancer, here’s what each of these types of UV rays do:
UVA rays (think Aging rays) can prematurely age your skin, causing wrinkles, sagging, broken capillaries and age spots (solar lentigines), and can pass through window glass. And they’re present all year round.
Flawless Daily Sunscreen has been tested according to stringent EU standards. The UVA in a circle is a marker that it meets those standards; this means that the UVA protection level is at least 1/3 of the SPF (the protection against UVB).
Flawless Daily Sunscreen tested higher than this – 49.6% higher than the required level, in fact.
The EU recognised Standard EN ISO 24443:2012 methodology was used.
UVB rays (think Burning rays) are the primary cause of sunburn and are blocked by window glass.
SPF = Sun Protection Factor (the number of times longer you can stay in the sun before burning compared to wearing no sunscreen) indicates the amount of UVB protection delivered.
The amount of UVB radiation that is filtered out varies with different SPFs:
So SPF 15 blocks 93% of UVB, SPF 30 blocks 96.7% of UVB and SPF 50 blocks 98.3% of UVB.
Flawless Daily Sunscreen achieved SPF 50 in in vivo testing and in the COLIPA International SPF Test Method.* Flawless Gossamer achieved SPF 50 in in vivo testing and in the COLIPA International SPF Test Method.*
Flawless Gossamer also provides a UVA PF of 25 according to the same stringent EU standards.
Bottom line - there is no safe way to tan. Every time you tan, you damage your skin as it's your skin's defense mechanism. As this damage builds, you speed up the aging of your skin and increase your risk for all types of skin cancer, including the most serious kind - malignant melanoma.
*This testing method replaces PPD testing as the new standard recommended by European Regulation. The PPD in-vivo method was developed by L’Oreal in response to the Boots in-vitro star rating method. This use of human volunteers invites questions regarding the ethics of this methodology due to the exposure to test subjects’ exposure to high UVA levels. Therefore the ISO method was developed to take the test back to a ‘safe place’ with this in-vitro method.