Sun Smarts

Deb Girard dispenses sunscreen and facts.

BY JOE BILLS

un-warmed skin is one of life’s simple pleasures, but sun and skin don’t always get along. From sunburn to the dangers of skin cancer, sun exposure comes with real risks. Last year, the Melanoma Foundation of New England began championing sun safety by dispensing free sunscreen in public spaces around Boston; this year, the organization’s goal is to place 400 dispensers. Deb Girard, the Foundation’s executive director, offers some sun-safety advice.

Limit Your Exposure

With sun, a little goes a long way. Avoid extended exposure between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., when the sun is most intense. Remember: If your shadow is shorter than you are, the sun’s rays are at their strongest.

Dress for Success

Girard recommends wearing protective clothing, including a hat with a brim and UV-protective sunglasses. Generally, dark colors offer better protection than light colors, but even covering up doesn’t necessarily provide full protection. If you can see light through a fabric, UV rays can get through, too.

Use Sunscreen

Apply broad-spectrum sunscreen (protecting against both UVA and UVB rays) 30 minutes before going outside, and reapply every couple of hours. Even “waterproof” sunscreens can wash off when you sweat or swim and then towel off, so reapply often.

Be Generous

When putting sunscreen on, pay attention to all other exposed areas: One ounce of sunscreen (enough to fill your palm or a shot glass) is recommended to cover the arms, legs, neck, and face of the average adult. After the Foundation’s sunscreen dispensers were installed in Boston last year,

Girard and her staff observed that many parents failed to apply sunscreen to their kids’ faces and ears, or they put sunscreen on their children but not on themselves. “We realized that not everyone knows how to apply it,” Girard notes. For its public dispensers, the Foundation chose an organic sunscreen. “There are no reliable data supporting the idea that chemical sunscreens are dangerous or poisonous,” Girard says, “but a lot of people feel strongly about chemicals. By offering an organic sunscreen we could keep the focus on the importance of sun protection, without getting sidetracked into a debate on active ingredients.”

Know Your SPF

SPF (sun protection factor) is the level of protection a sunscreen provides against UVB rays, the main cause of sunburn. An SPF 30 sunscreen lowers a 30-minute sun exposure to the equivalent of one minute of unprotected exposure. The higher the number, the more the protection. SPF 50 sunscreens filter out approximately 98 percent of UVB rays. The higher you go, the smaller the difference becomes. Always use sunscreens with an SPF of 30 or higher.

Don’t Tan

Using a tanning bed for 20 minutes is equivalent to spending as much as three hours at the beach without sun protection. “Tanned skin is damaged skin,” Girard says. “Anytime the color of your skin changes, you’ve caused a mutation. Tanning beds are even more dangerous than the sun. No one goes into a tanning bed with sunscreen on.”

Eat Your Vitamin D

Sun exposure does prompt your body to create healthy vitamin D, but Girard recommends getting most of your vitamin D from supplements or foods such as orange juice, milk, and fish. Ten minutes of unprotected sun two or three times a week is enough to help your skin make vitamin D. Getting more sun won’t increase your vitamin D level, but it will increase your risk of skin cancer.

Get Serious

More than five million skin cancers are diagnosed each year. The incidence of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, is rising faster than that of any other cancer. “It’s a serious problem, an epidemic, really,” Girard says. “We haven’t taken it seriously enough, and that has to change.” Melanoma is the second-mostcommon cancer among young men and women between the ages of 15 and 29. “Most melanomas can be treated if caught early, but there’s still no cure,” Girard cautions. “The best treatment is not to get it at all.”

Melanoma Foundation of New England, Concord, Mass.: mfne.org district of “the city of Washington in the territory of Columbia.”

From the start, the Almanac offered wisdom, advice, and entertainment on subjects ranging from planting schedules to healthy living, from etiquette and behavior to fishing and the castration of bulls— plus plenty of romantic advice and astrology thrown in.

Thomas devised a “secret weather forecasting formula,” which to this day is kept in a black tin box in the Old Farmer’s Almanac offices here in Dublin, New Hampshire. The first-ever weather forecast, covering January 1 to 9, 1793, was “cold and frosty … looks like snow.”

By the start of the Civil War, the Almanac was already the longestrunning American periodical.

One of the most infamous Almanac weather forecasts was allegedly printed in 1816. Thomas, it’s said, was ill, so the printer sent a messenger to collect the July weather forecast. The messenger returned, say- ing that the printer should print whatever he wished. He did: a July 13 forecast that called for “rain, hail and snow.” Upon his recovery, a furious Thomas recalled every copy that he could and corrected the issue with a more-seasonable prediction. That July, however, rain, hail, and, yes, snow did fall, thanks in part to the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. Thus a legend was born.

The 1832 edition was the first to insert Old into the Almanac ’s title. Old was soon dropped, though, and not used again until 1848, when it became The Old Farmer’s Almanac once and for all.

The iconic hole in the upperleft corner débuted in 1851.

Three years before he became president, attorney Abraham Lincoln used the Almanac to defend William “Duff” Armstrong, accused of killing a man by hitting him with a weighted leather “slungshot.” A witness claimed to have seen the attack by the light of the moon. Referring to the Almanac entry for the day in question (August 29, 1857), Lincoln argued—successfully—that his client couldn’t have been identified, because the moon “ran low” that night and wouldn’t have cast much light.

In 1939, Robb Sagendorph, founder of Yankee Publishing and editor of Yankee, acquired the Almanac from Little, Brown & Company. As the Almanac’s 11th editor (and fourth owner), he set about “reestablishing Robert B. Thomas in policy and fact. Beginning in 1941, his original ideas shall be our guideposts.”

In 1942, a German spy was captured on Long Island with a copy of the Almanac in his pocket. Concerned that the enemy was using the book’s moon-phases chart, the government banned weather forecasts from wartime publications. Ever resourceful, Sagendorph—who himself was working for the Office of Censorship at the time— changed the Almanac cover line from weather “forecasts” to

“indications.” Throughout the war, a letter from the Office of Censorship was included every year, absolving the Almanac of the prohibition against weather forecasts.

In 1978, Dr. Richard Head retired from his position with NASA to join the Almanac staff and continue his solar research. Dr. Head’s scientific approach to weather forecasting augmented Thomas’s formula. Meteorologist Michael Steinberg has been the Almanac weather forecaster since 1996.

Janice Stillman, the current editor, is just the 13th in the publication’s history. That’s an average tenure of more than 17 years! —Joe Bills