Physical sunscreens, like Betty said, are actually reflective things, like titanium dioxide and zinc oxide. The original sunscreen, that white paste that lifeguards used to use, was zinc oxide. And it is the best, it's a block. Nothing gets through that, but certainly it's cosmetically unattractive.
So then they started to color them. They made things in purples and bright greens. And kids liked to use them, but it's again, not something you're going to be smearing on your body every day. That's a physical sunblock.
A chemical sunblock, or a chemical sunscreen, is something that's going to absorb the wavelength of light and keep it from your skin. So you've got on the one hand reflective and you've got on the other hand absorptive.
And she's right, we need to keep a minimum of three things so that you get protection from both ultraviolet B, which is the most damaging of the sun rays, and the thing that provides the most redness in your skin from sunburn; as well as UVA, which is a more insidious form. It takes a long time to get sunburn from UVA, but it gives you a lot more sun damage.
SUSAN CINGARI: Dr. Bellman, what about sunscreens for babies? What kind should be applying on little, little, teeny babies?
BETTY BELLMAN, MD: Recently, the American Academy of Dermatology said it was okay to apply chemical-free sunscreen to infants under the age of six months, meaning no chemical, just the active ingredient should be titanium dioxide or micronized zinc oxide particles. Of course, ten to four, you don't want to go out in the sun with a small infant under the age of six months, and to apply it to the areas that are going to be sun exposed is okay, as long as it's chemical free.
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