What sunscreen do you feel comfortable using on your toddler?

What's wrong with regular kids' sunscreens? Are there studies that show harmful effects? If you want more natural ingredients, I think California Baby makes sunscreen.

Environmental Working Group (EWG) just put out their list of best and worst sunscreens, and have included kids sunscreens in their testing. For those of you not familiar with EWG, they are a non-profit group that researches chemicals and their effect on people, and then lobbies the government to try to get dangerous chemicals banned or phased-out. They have posted "skin deep" - which is research on personal care products, etc. The sunscreen studies are new. Their site is great (although it really gets me angry with our government... we are so behind the times compared to Europe in terms of protecting our citizens from dangerous substances).

none

I just use adult stuff on them, they are Italian/Aussies and they tan after one day in the sun...

I'd love to hear about some alternatives. I reluctantly have to use these chemicals on my kids (I use standard drugstore bought types-- coppertone etc) because we are extremely high skin cancer risk in my family. I had initially only used Kiehl's but it got expensive over time and that's why I branched out.

I switched to California baby. It's fine, except that it needs to be rubbed in a lot, and isn't waterproof AT ALL. It seems to come off instantly if she gets the least bit wet.

I just saw a thread on this over in the Natural Body Care forum. It might give you some more input.

California Baby

I use UV Naturals, although I would be comfortable using Badger Balm or California Baby brands, also. I generally only use it when we will be out at midday for more than 1 hour or near water.

Plain old Coppertone. Sunblock isn't high on my worry priority list.

I try not too use sunblock unless necessary, but when we do we use www.mexitan.com
It works great for us. Even at the beach.

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I agree.

Also, I think the risk of getting (and the deadliness of) melanoma for our family is way higher than a possible risk of cancers possibly (but not definitely) caused by sunscreen.

Even if you are just interested in sun protection (not protecting yourself from potentially hazerdous chemicals) you should still check out the ewg sunscreen webisite. They rate the sunscreens for both hazerdous chemicals and ability to protect you from the sun. Their criteria for good sun protection involves UVA protection, UVB protection and sunscreen stability since many sunscreens breakdown rapidly in sunlight.

I use UV naturals baby because of its ability to protect against sun damage and its use of natural ingrediants. I would be ok with using badger spf 30 also though for the same reasons. You can get a 7 ounce version of the uv naturals which makes it cheaper than california baby and badger spf 30 which would be 26 or so dollars for 4 ounces if i remember correctly.

coconut oil. its waterproof but needs to be reapplied every 30-45 minutes. my youngest dd is the fairest skinned babe and will burn 5 minutes into sun exposure, sunscreens only delayed that (even california baby) by about 10 more minutes. since switching to straight coconut oil she is no longer getting burned and I know we are using the most natural product out there that also has many other health benefits to it.