No I am not kidding.  I actually think there are a few parallels between shopping for a sunscreen and shopping for a conventional home in 2021.   Yeah, I know, it sounds crazy, but stick with me here while I explain…

Sure there are a gazillion differences.  Sure one costs about ten bucks while the other costs at least $100K (and obviously much more depending on where you live).  Sure one you lather all over your body and quickly dispose of while the other you live in for (in some cases) many years and typically invest a lot of your hard-earned money, blood, sweat, and tears, if not emotions and memories, to make that house a home.  And sure the process for buying each is completely and utterly different.

And yet, what struck me as I began to consider the content for this post was how similar I believe many people feel and how they react as they approach the purchase of each of these two items.  

Similarity #1:  We Buy Both (at least in part) For Health and Well-Being

No doubt people buy sunscreen to live happier, healthier lives; to help protect their body from skin cancer and what is now almost universally accepted to be the damaging rays of the sun; and let’s face it at the end of the day, many buy to simply   look and feel better about themselves.  The sun as we have talked about in previous posts is a natural source of EMFs that in lower doses can be healthful and beneficial.

In a similar way, some buy a home to gain their own happiness and peace of mind derived from simply having a permanent protected shelter over their heads, or from the pride of owning your own property, or from the freedom that goes with the chance to express your personality or pursue your interests or avocation or simply to gain a measure of privacy one could not get in a rental space.   

Both purchases are driven, again at least in part, by the desire to be or stay healthy.  

Similarity #2:  Despite Similarity #1, we are Generally Clueless About What’s Inside

Well, not completely clueless, but I’ve seen that Sunscreen Stare in my store many a time; that MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) Look when reading a sunscreen label; that helpless confused “How do I Know if this is a Good or Safe Sunscreen?” Look.  Hey I get it, reading the ingredient list for most of today’s sunscreens is night and day from the ingredient list of say a Kind Bar or a box of Annie’s vegan Mac and Cheez.  It’s seems next to impossible to know what is really inside a bottle of sunscreen—filled with so many mutli-syllable chemical sounding ingredients—unless you have done some research and are fairly knowledgeable.  

But the same can be said when shopping for most conventional homes–especially if they are new or pre-construction—which don’t even come with an “ingredient list” one can read.  Who knows what chemicals are inside, behind the walls, under the floors?   We walk into a pretty showroom, handed a slick marketing brochure, shown virtual floor plans, offered samples of the final finishes, maybe even tour a model home, and yet are we ever completely sure of what we are buying until built?  

Some homes are given a score for energy efficiency (called a HERS rating), but no comparable score for health exists.  Some homes’ air quality is scored according to EPA’s Indoor airPLUS certification standards, but the program is relatively new and only voluntary.  And we know that though a few products have been banned from home construction—lead and asbestos comes to mind—there are literally thousands that have never been evaluated for prolonged human exposure safety.

By comparison, within the past year, the European Commission has published preliminary opinions on the safety of three organic UV filters called oxybenzone, homosalate, and octocrylene..  It found that the levels of two of them were not safe in the amounts at which they are currently used, and proposed a concentration limit of 2.2 percent for oxybenzone and 1.4 percent for homosalate. 

Similariy #3:  Both come with a Score that is Supposed to Be an Automatic Indicator of What You are Getting for your Money.

In the Sunscreen industry, the SPF or Sun Protection Factor is there so consumers can at a glance more easily compare efficacy of different sunscreen brands—the bigger the number, the more minutes one can stay in the sun protected .  But in my last post I mentioned that SPFs can also lure consumers into a false sense of safety that realistically keeps consumers longer in the sun than would have otherwise occurred.  

Moreover, the EWG reports that SPF scores are subjective based on human observations and testing methods.  One Proctor & Gamble study in particular highlights the potential for variability in SPF.  When P & G tested a competitor’s SPF 100 product at five different labs, the results varied from SPF 37 to SPF 75.  A 1.7% difference in light transmission yielded an SPF measurement of 37 instead of 100.

In the Homebuilding industry, HERS (Home Energy Rating System) is voluntarily used to score homes from 0 to 150.  A score of 100 means that the home being rated is average in energy efficiency, compared to other newly built homes.  A score of 0 means it is a Net Zero Energy home that uses no net energy.  And a score of 150 means the home being scored is 50% less efficient than a standard new home.

Hey, numbers in both cases are helpful but neither tells the whole story and in fact, really only tell a small part of the story.  In both cases, more information is required and needs to be conveyed with greater precision for consumers to make better informed choices.

I’ll leave you with this one nutrition tip direct from my dermatologist that I often pass along to my natural food customers.  She says that Niamidicide taken in 500 mg doses twice a day can prevent skin cancers when obviously other common sense precautions are taken.  It is part of my personal summer regiment of vitamins.