I'm cautious because I don't react too well to sun exposure. I try to avoid the sun between 11 and 3 o'clock.

But I have two friends who are more sensible, they've freckled skin and red hair. One had to wear a hat and repeatedly use high factor sun cream when we went wandering, or his skin would start to peel.

K-Tipp/saldo tested the six most popular sun sprays and creams, and an alternative that contains only mineralic filters, in 2006. The PDF (available here) is worth a download. For those who don't know German, the important rows in the table are "Abweichung zur Deklaration" (deviation from the declared protection factor in percent), and "Wasserfestigkeit" (water resistance retention). Not factored in, but mentioned nonetheless, is that Weleda, Garnier and L'Oréal don't contain a substance that is suspected of being hormonally active (OMC Ethylhexyl Methoxycinnamate for the boffins ).

Hey that is interesting.

Many years ago when I was at Uni, I had a friend who's father was dying from melanoma, he had done a fair bit of research about sunscreens. He was a surf life saver and he told me to only get sunscreen with methoxymethylcinnamate.

My kids are the blonde, pale types and are routinely covered and slathered. It has been drummed into us all since I was about 10, 'slip, slop, slap', slip on a shirt, slap on some sunscreen and slap on a hat. In most schools in Australis the kids are not allowed in the playground with out a hat.

Off to read some more about suncreens.

Larissa

I use a parasol, and I get laughed at for it waaaaaaay more here than I ever did in Australia. No one respects the sun here! Or maybe they just don't respect me and my umbrella ....

My son has blonde hair and blue eyes. Factor 50 with a hat and log armed bathing suit and not in the sun between 12 and 2pm is the norm in our family. Suncreen re-applied every hour. The sun can be damaging for the eyes as well, so sunglasses in the snow too. I would never do what my parents did and allow my child to get blistered skin.

My husband grew up in Australia and never had freckles. Well..last year in the Swiss sun he got his first freckles. And he has olive skin.

Put sunscreen on the bottom of your feet :-)

The previously mentioned Swiss product 'Daylong' is excellent and needs tpo be applied at least 30 minutes before exposure to the sun, so you won't often see people applying it in public - they already did it at home. Nor can you see that it has been applied.

You have to be carefull with your eyes and Daylong. Mountain walking may find you with burning sweat drops in your eyes. If you wear contact lenses put them in before opening the Daylong tube.

Ref. the original poster, my brother-in-law is a doctor here and reckons that suntan factor creams make no difference to the likelihood of contracting melanoma, they just prevent tanning and /or burning...

Don't know what they put in that Daylong stuff but I had to bin a tube of it because it brought me out in a right nasty rash.

Beautiful brand new bikini and ugly blotchy rash to match.

We've had rashes from Daylong too.
We're now using Louis Widmer, who has both "all day" suncream (factor 20+ - yes, that's enough with this product) and mineral pigment suncream for baby. We've been using these for two years now: on the beach, in the city, in the mountains. No sunburn at all to report.
Look for the value pack - 2 tubes at a reduced price.