Florida dermatologist Thomas Connelly, who spends 15 to 20 hours a week in the sun windsurfing, takes an aggressive approach to protecting his skin. He doesn’t rely on sunscreens.
“I wear a Lycra suit, very lightweight. You can get them at any dive shop for about $100. Even on a hot day it’s comfortable.” But it covers only 90 percent of his body.
“The final thing-I haven’t got anybody else to do this yet-is I had a seamstress make a hood that covers my face, neck and head.” Over the openings for the eyes he has added a sun visor that blocks the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. “I’m virtually 99 percent sunproofed.”
We know the dangers of the sun, but we don’t want to give up what we grew up doing-swimming, boating, fishing, playing tennis, snorkeling, beachcombing, biking or walking.
We know if we’re swimming, the sun’s rays can penetrate below the water, and if we’re boating we know that sunlight reflects up from the water. We know we’re not supposed to go out in the sun between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., but if we must, then we slather on sunscreen rated high-SPF (sun protection factor). But most of us aren’t as diligent as Connelly.
“Sunscreen is a necessary evil, but most people don’t use it properly,” he says. “They don’t reapply it often enough, and they don’t apply it where they really need it”-on the top of the head, the tops of the ears, backs of the hands, tops of the feet.
Connelly tries to protect his patients’ faces and heads by giving them a wide-brimmed straw hat originally made for lifeguards by a California company, Headhunter Hats. The hats sell for $19.95, but he gets them for about $12.
“This hat is the best I’ve seen. It’s tightly woven so no sun gets through, and it has a band to keep it from blowing off.”
He also recommends a special line of clothing made by a Washington State firm as an alternative to messy sunscreens: “They’re good products for Florida because they block the sun, but they have wide mesh under the arms so they’re well ventilated.”
Phil Gorman, 32, a former lifeguard, says he and his partner started Headhunter “because lifeguards really needed something like this.”
They sold 30,000 of the hats-their only product-last year and expect to sell 50,000 this year. Dermatologists in Florida such as Connelly have helped to spread the word, Gorman says.
“We bought a mailing list (of all the Florida dermatologists) and sent letters to 200 of them offering to send them a hat if they would recommend the hat to their patients. It worked very well for us, and we’ve expanded into Texas, Arizona and Nevada and we’re about to go nationwide.”
Gorman says the hats, which have a brim just under 5 inches wide, protect much better than the baseball caps a lot of men wear while fishing or working outdoors.
Other companies also offer wide-brimmed sunblocking hats, including Sun Precautions, based in Everett, Wash. Started by Shaun Hughes, a skin-cancer survivor, the company has a whole line of clothing that blocks UVA and UVB (ultraviolet A and B) rays.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Sun Precautions’ fabric Solumbra as a “medical device,” a designation applied to items from replacement hips to bedside breathing machines.
“When I first went there, they laughed,” says Hughes, referring to the FDA. “But the more they learned, they realized it was a serious matter.” He won FDA approval in 1992 for his products, which include clothing for toddlers, children and adults.
Hughes, who grew up in cloudy, rainy Seattle, was diagnosed with skin cancer at 26 when a friend he was swimming with noticed a suspicious mole on his shoulder and told him he should get it checked.
“She had already had (skin cancer) six years earlier. She probably saved my life. Unfortunately, there was a recurrence, and she later died. It was very sad.”
Hughes set to work trying to find something better than sunscreens to block the sun. The result is Solumbra, which has a sun-protection factor of 30, compared with a typical cotton T-shirt, which provides an SPF of only 5 to 7, depending on how tightly woven the fabric is.
The fabric is lightweight, and the clothing has ventilation built in, Hughes says. “It works either wet or dry and blocks greater than 97 percent of both UVB and UVA.”
There are no short-sleeved shirts or shorts in the clothing line, but most pieces have built-in ventilation panels under the arms or across the back. There’s even a long-sleeved shirt that can be worn while swimming to protect the neck, arms and back.
Headhunter Hats may be ordered by calling 1-800-808-8228. To receive a catalog for the Sun Precautions clothing line, call 1-800-882-7860.
