My Non-Toxic Summer Essentials Guide

The clean sunscreens, bug protection, and summer swaps I trust for my family

Most mornings right now I’m outside with Clive before it gets hot, giving him a few minutes of gentle sun, his “sun snack”, what my midwife Shannon calls it, before it’s strong out. The other two are usually out there too in their pajamas, giving snacks to the chickens, Poppy in her rainboots even though it’s July, and I’ve got my coffee and no shoes on, and it’s become my favorite part of the day.

Clive is my fourth baby and the first one I’ve done this with from the beginning, and it makes me think about how scared of the sun I was when Poppy was born, how covered up I kept her, it feels so different now. I’m particular about summer more than any season, because the kids are outside all day and everything is touching their skin, the sun, the pool, the grass, the bug spray, so over a lot of reading and trial and error these are the items I trust and use, all in one place.

I have my Complete Non-Toxic Baby Registry Guide if you want the baby-specific things, but this one is for the whole family and just for summer.

For Sunscreen

If you change one thing this summer I’d make it this, because standard sunscreen has quite a bit of chemicals in it that I believe are more risky than sun exposure. We rarely use sunblock here, unless we’re going to be in the sun for awhile without shade, which rarely happens. My kids swim and play outside, they’re getting a little sun every day and I can’t remember the last time they got burned because they’ve built up what’s known as their “solar callus”. It’s the same idea as a callus on your hand, a little exposure over and over and your skin adapts, building up melanin and getting more tolerant so it can handle the sun instead of being shocked by it.

I’ve learned so much from Dr. Alexis Cowan, who has her PhD from Princeton and studies light and metabolism, and she’s the reason I started questioning what I previously believed about the sun… I used to be so scared of it! The research that convinced me is about outdoor workers, people who are out in the sun all day for a living turn out to be less prone to melanoma than people who work indoors, which is the opposite of what I’d always assumed. She explains that the real risk isn’t how much sun you get, it’s whether you burn. Skin that’s been covered up all year has nothing built up, so a full day of sun on vacation turns into a burn, and the burns are what do the damage. Those workers are getting more sun than those working indoors and burning less, because they’re adapted to it. A little sun daily is what builds that callus.

She also explains that being sun deficient carries real risk of its own, that when UVB hits your skin it isn't only vitamin D your body makes, it's a whole family of related compounds from that same starting material, plus a hormone cascade that includes the signal telling your skin to make melanin, which is what protects you. The same light that makes the vitamin D is the light that tells your skin how to handle it. And UVB is only around when the sun is high enough, here that's usually 10am to 4pm, so I make sure they're outside for a little in the afternoon too, not just first thing.

The part surprised me is that it starts with your eyes. When UVB reaches your eyes it sets off that hormonal cascade, and part of what that produces is the signal that tells your skin to make melanin. So if you’re outside in sunglasses, you’re blocking the message, your body never gets told to tan, and you burn instead. It doesn’t mean staring at the sun, it’s just letting light reach your eyes, even on cloudy days. She says the same about morning light, getting outside at sunrise, when it’s red and infrared and there’s no UV in it yet, is what preps your skin for the middle of the day. So I don’t wear sunglasses at the beginning of the day when I’m trying to tell my body to get ready for the sun. I still like the way sunglasses look for certain outfits, but by the pool or out in the garden I’ve gotten into the habit of going without. It’s a big part of why the kids are out there right after breakfast, they’ve eased into the day before the sun is ever strong.

So that's what we do. I don't hide my kids from the sun like I used to when Poppy was born, but I'm also not letting them get burned either, so if they've already been out for a a little and they want to stay out longer, that's when the sunscreen goes on, and after that I'll utilize shade. It's so nice not being as stressed about the sun! My vitamin D is in the optimal range now, and I'm not taking a supplement for it anymore.

When I do use sunscreen, I keep it simple, I look for zinc, and the fewer ingredients the better. Zinc works completely differently than the rest of what’s out there, it sits on top of your skin and reflects the light back, and non-nano means the particles are too big to pass through skin at all. The chemical ones do the opposite by design, they absorb the light, and they absorb into your bloodstream right along with it.

These are the ones I always avoid when I’m looking at sunscreen ingredients: homosalate, octisalate, octocrylene, avobenzone, oxybenzone and octinoxate. When they tested all six, every one was in people’s bloodstream after one day of wearing it, and two of them were still showing up three weeks after people stopped, so it isn’t passing through. Several of these are endocrine disruptors, which means your body reads them as hormones and responds to them. All this to say, I thought I was doing the right thing with the spray sunscreen I used to use, and it turns out I was doing my body and my hormones a disservice instead.

My favorite now is: