Here comes the sun.

Gee, swell. Remember how I mentioned my love of the Yahoo news stories yesterday? Well, this morning I watched a video on the dangers of sunscreens, done by a doctor in Denver. Apparently, sunscreens are not yet regulated by the FDA so they may or may not do what they claim on the packaging. WHAT?! Naive little me, I assumed that with the scares of skin cancer looming, surely what my sunscreen said it would do would happen. The doctor reported that a recent study of 400+ products had been done, ranking them from best to worst. I clicked on the link to see where my sunscreen was ranked, and it was on the BAD list. Nice. Keep in mind, my dear friends, that I am one of the whitest women you will ever meet, and I had been quite proud of my constant use of 70+ SPF sunscreen this summer. According to the website, I had been spraying my albino body with "cancer-CAUSING agents" and a product that doesn't work, basically coating myself in a nice big invite to the sun -- come burn me! The sunscreen I use received a very bad rating of 7 (with 0 and 1 being the best). And it wasn't cheap, to boot.

(my sunscreen, pictured above, except I had purchased the 70SPF version)

The bad news: my white skin has apparently been exposed daily to harmful UVA/UVB rays. While my product may not have been doing more than making me feel successful in my own personal war against skin cancer, it was super easy to apply (it was one of those fine mist sprays that you don't even have to rub in and miss any spots). So much for easy to apply and no missed spots -- I don't think the good list had any body mist versions.

The good news: miraculously, I have not gotten sunburned this summer. The only thing I have noticed is that I am a tad bit darker (which for me means I went from "translucent" to "beige" compared to everyone else) -- good since I don't appear as pasty white anymore, but bad because we all know that tan skin just means you have been exposed to the sun. And thank the good Lord above, it is still early enough in the summer for me to now have the opportunity to pick one of the sunscreens on the good list (although I must admit, I hadn't heard of many of them).

Anyway, I thought you all might benefit from hearing about this study -- if you want to check it out, go to www.cbs4denver.com (the station that aired the report) and click on printed version of the news story (versus the video version). There is a link at the bottom of the article that takes you to the study findings, and you can even search according to brand if you want to see how your sunscreen ranks. So glad the FDA is looking out for us. Thanks, FDA (insert high amounts of sarcasm here).

Okay. Onwards and upwards, people...