Protecting Workers from Ultraviolet Radiation

protection where it shields the skin from most of the sky, in addition to the solar disc. Since the
exact reduction in intensity provided by a hat depends on both the hat design and the prevailing
solar elevation and cloud cover, sunscreens may also need to be applied to the face and neck to
provide additional protection.

9.3.2 Sunscreens

Sunscreens are a secondary method of protection, and are advised only to be used to protect
those parts of the body that cannot easily be protected by clothing. Unlike clothing, it is difficult
to see which parts of the body have been missed when sunscreens are applied. Sunscreens can in
some circumstances produce adverse skin reactions (e.g. photoallergy). Once applied, the level
of protection diminishes with time in an unpredictable way, depending upon how it binds to the
skin (substantivity), sweating, abrasion, or water immersion.

Topical sunscreens act by absorbing or scattering UVR. Sunscreens traditionally contained

organic filters which absorb mainly UVB (e.g. octylmethoxycinnamate). However, in recent
years, with growing concerns about the risks from exposure to UVA, the majority of suncare
products now offer some protection from UVA, either by the addition of organic filters
absorbing in this waveband (e.g., avobenzone) or mineral pigments (e.g. TiO2, ZnO).

A quantitative measure of the degree of protection afforded by a sunscreen is the SPF. It is

popularly interpreted as how much longer skin covered with sunscreen takes to burn compared
with unprotected skin (HEA 1996). A more appropriate definition of the SPF is that it is the ratio
of the least amount of ultraviolet energy required to produce a minimal erythema on sunscreen
(or clothing) protected skin to the amount of energy required to produce the same erythema on
unprotected skin (FDA 1978). Ten years ago most commercially available sunscreen products
had SPFs less than 10 but today there is a trend for much higher factors.
ICNIRP recommends that for adequate protection of sun-sensitive skin (see Section 3.2.2) an
SPF of 30+ is appropriate for mid- and higher-latitudes and 45+ for the tropics and other extreme
conditions. This may appear at first to be overly conservative. However, the following factors
must be considered.
• Application. There is ample evidence that the numerical measure of protection
indicated on the product pack is generally higher than achieved in practice. The
protection factor is assessed in the laboratory for an application thickness of 2
mg/cm2 (CIE, 1990); however, a number of studies have shown that consumers
apply much less than this (Bech-Thomsen and Wulf 1993, Gottlieb et al 1997,
Stenberg and Larkö 1985, Diffey and Grice 1997, Azurdia et al 1999) typically
between 0.5 to 1.5 mg/cm2. This has a significant effect on protection with most
users probably achieving a mean protection value of between 20-50% of that
expected from the product label. Compounded with this is the likely variability of
protection over the skin surface due to uneven application technique (Rhodes and
Diffey 1996).

60