As the temperature gradually rises, the sunlight begins to become stronger, and for consumers who advocate white skin, resisting the damage of ultraviolet rays to the skin and achieving effective sun protection has become an important part of daily skin care. Among all kinds of sunscreen products, sunscreen spray is favored by consumers because of its convenience and ease of use. However, in the investigation, the reporter found that a small sunscreen spray, if used improperly, may bring some safety hazards to consumers.
Not long ago, a patient came to the emergency department of Changsha Third Hospital, who came to the hospital with breathing difficulties and cough. The emergency physician prescribed an application for chest CT examination for the patient, and after multi-dimensional CT imaging, it was found that the patient's lungs showed a large area of symmetrical white ground-glass opacities, which is commonly known as white lung. The doctor recommended that the patient be admitted to the hospital, but the patient said that he was a tourist and had only been in Changsha for two days, so he was prescribed some anti-inflammatory drugs and left the hospital. Radiologists are very puzzled by this, because white lung usually only appears in the elderly population, and some patients who were seriously ill during the new crown epidemic, and this patient is very young, how can such a severe "white lung" suddenly appear.
According to Director Zhang's recollection, the doctor carefully asked about the patient's past medical history and had never had a similar condition before. But the patient himself recounted that he was going to travel during the day, because the weather in Changsha was particularly sunny that day, he used sunscreen spray before going out, sprayed on his face, he did not hold his breath at that time, he had been coughing all day, about nine hours later, at night, he already felt very difficult to breathe.
Zhang Xiuping, Director of the Radiology Department of the Third Hospital of Changsha City: He is a symmetrical and diffuse ground-glass density shadow in both lungs, and you can see the pulmonary sores in his lungs, and the symmetrical density increase shadow in both lungs, this large white patch, from the upper lung to the lower lung.
Doctor confirmed
White lung stems from inhaling sunscreen spray
The young patient had no previous history of respiratory illness and felt inhalation after applying sunscreen spray to his face, and developed lung discomfort on the same day. The doctor said that it was almost certain that the lungs had an allergic reaction after inhaling the sunscreen spray, which caused pulmonary edema lesions, which led to acute hypersensitivity pneumonitis.
Fan Du, Deputy Chief Physician of the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Changsha Third Hospital: Acute functional pneumonia is like our skin allergies, which may be itchy and painful at once, but it will disappear after a while. The same is true for lung allergies, but if the inhalation volume is not very large and the allergic reaction is not very serious, it will disappear quickly.
The fine particles in the sunscreen spray may cause allergic lesions in the user's lungs, and this case caught the attention of reporters. Is the allergic reaction encountered by this patient just an isolated case? What are the allergenic ingredients contained in the sunscreen spray? The use of sunscreen spray on the exposed skin surface of the body, especially on the face, is a habitual way of use, so what should we pay attention to in the use of it in order to avoid causing damage to our health? The reporter immediately launched an investigation.
The reporter typed "sunscreen spray" on multiple online social platforms, and there were as many as 460,000 related posts, and from some of the posts that were hotly commented, the reporter saw videos of some well-known actors using sunscreen spray when working on the set, they were spraying heavily on their faces, and the sunscreen spray formed a large area of aerosol around their faces under the sunlight reflection. There are some posts that say that a celebrity can use up to 30 bottles of sunscreen spray a month, or even several bottles a day. In addition to celebrities, there are many bloggers, beauty lovers, and even mothers who post videos of using sunscreen spray on social platforms, and you can see from the video that in the process of spraying sunscreen spray, a thick large area of aerosol is generated around their bodies and faces.
Search for "sunscreen spray" on some shopping platforms, and you can see that the products that appear are classified into isolation sunscreen, men's sunscreen, refreshing oil control, portable sunscreen, children's sunscreen and other sub-items. The total sales volume of several stores shows that the cumulative number of payers is more than 400,000, and more than a dozen products show that the cumulative number of payers is more than 10,000.
When you enter these stores, there are usually videos explaining how to use them, and most of the demonstrators spray on the face and limbs, and some sunscreen products specifically for children can also be seen spraying on the children's faces and limbs in the video.
After searching and comparing, the reporter finally determined 7 sunscreen spray products that are selling on the Internet according to the sales volume, selling price and target user group displayed by the merchants. Among these seven products, the sales price ranged from 40 yuan to 299 yuan, the least sold also had 6,000 purchases, and the most sold products had a total of 400,000 people who had paid; among them, the reporter selected 3 sunscreen spray products that merchants claimed were specially used for children, one of which was a domestic product, and the other two were imported products.
In the store's introduction to use, only one merchant prompted on the page that when using children's faces, they need to spray them on the palm of their hands and then apply them evenly to their faces, while the other two said that they could be used directly on children's faces.
There are dozens of ingredients in sunscreen sprays
After receiving the product, the reporter opened the package and saw that almost all the product packaging was printed with dozens of product ingredients, and as a consumer, there was no way to know what these proper nouns represented. Journalists can only make inquiries with the help of professional ingredient analysis software. In addition to the analysis software, most of the ingredients in the seven products are moisturizing, antioxidant skin conditioners and chemical sunscreens, in addition to this, the seven products also contain ingredients labeled as butane, propane, and isobutane, which are collectively referred to as propellants on the composition analysis software.
Fan Du, Deputy Chief Physician of the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Changsha Third Hospital: There are many ingredients, for example, the common ingredient is ethyl salicylate, which is found in many sunscreen products, so this ingredient may be allergic to some people. Propellants, for allergies to this ingredient, that may vary from person to person, in fact, both can cause allergies.
Hold one's breath
It also does not prevent inhalation of suspended particles
Regardless of the substance, the atomized tiny particles in the sunscreen spray float around the user, and the doctor reminds that even if you hold your breath while spraying, the suspended particles filled in the environment will not settle and dissipate quickly in a short period of time, and may still be inhaled without the user knowing.
Fan Du, Deputy Chief Physician of the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Changsha Third Hospital: Even if you don't breathe when you spray and hold your breath for a while, after you spray, there are many small suspended particles in the surrounding air, and you still inhale them when you inhale. Don't think that if you hold your breath for a while, there is no damage, that is impossible, because there are very high concentrations of these things in the surrounding environment that you spray, and they will eventually inhale them into the lungs.
History of long-term chronic exposure
It can easily lead to lung damage
Hypersensitivity pneumonitis is divided into three course states: acute, subacute, and chronic. If you seem to hold your breath every day when you apply sunscreen spray to your face every day during a summer or longer period, but the particles in the environment that do not dissipate immediately are inhaled without knowing it, it is a long-term chronic exposure history, and the damage to the lungs is a subacute course. If this process is more than half a year, it can be determined as a chronic course of the disease, and there may be no cough or discomfort symptoms in this process, so there is no warning, and it is difficult to attract the attention of patients, but it will cause irreversible damage to the lungs.
Fan Du, Deputy Chief Physician of the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Changsha Third Hospital: If the same alveoli or a lung segment is always stimulated, it will form some fibrous foci, which are actually scars in the lungs. Of course, a small number of scars do not affect the function of the entire lung, but after too many scars, if you inhale such things for a long time subacute or chronically, this irreversible damage is lung fibrosis.
Doctors recommend that sunscreen spray should not be sprayed on the face as much as possible, and if it must be used, it is best to use it in a ventilated area. Try to avoid spraying in the car and in the small space of the indoor dressing room, because the damage to the lungs by long-term inhalation is subtle, if the lung lesions or injuries are really detected in the future, it is difficult for the user to think that it may be caused by inhalation of sunscreen spray particles.
Fan Du, Deputy Chief Physician of the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Changsha Third Hospital: If you have these symptoms, when the doctor asks, you have to remember that you have sprayed sunscreen spray, and then give the doctor a hint, and he will associate this hypersensitivity pneumonitis or some irreversible damage.
Careless use of sunscreen spray
It can turn into a flamethrower in an instant
The 7 sunscreen sprays purchased by the reporter during the investigation all contain methane, propane, isobutane and other ingredients called propellants, which are actually the ingredients contained in most sunscreen sprays, in fact, these ingredients are also the main ingredients in lighter fuel. This means that if it is not handled properly, or if it is used by an open flame, it is very likely to catch fire.
On the online media, the reporter saw a short video released by the parent, which was filmed by the surveillance video at home, when the parent was using sunscreen spray for the child, but the child was playing with the lighter in his hand, causing the sunscreen spray to instantly turn into a flamethrower, burning the child's face.
It can be seen that if we are a little careless in use, it may cause the safety risk of fire. The reporter took the purchased sunscreen spray product to the fire department, and with the help of firefighters, did some practical tests to see if the sunscreen spray had a risk of combustion, flammability, and flammability. Before the test, we saw that the firefighters were not only wearing protective clothing, but also firefighting helmets and protective gloves.
Zhang Jishuai, political instructor of Jiangyuan Fire and Rescue Station, Liling City, Hunan Province: Sunscreen spray is a very popular product on the market in recent years, but for our firefighting, it is both fresh and not new. Why? Because the products that can be sprayed have a certain pressure in the tank. And all sunscreen sprays have propellants, like this sunscreen spray, its propellant ingredients are marked with butane, propane, isobutane, we all know that these ingredients have a certain flammability and flammability, if we are a little careless in the operation and use process, it may bring safety risks.
As can be seen from the test screen, the flame on the head of the igniter was originally very small, when the firefighter sprayed the sunscreen spray on the head of the igniter, the small flame evolved into a huge fire in an instant, and the firefighter changed to another sunscreen spray for experiments, and a huge fire ball also appeared at the head of the igniter, which further confirmed that the ingredients in the propellant are combustion-aiding, and five of the products purchased by the reporter were confirmed to have a combustion-boosting effect in this experiment. This is an important reminder to consumers who use sunscreen spray, when a person is using sunscreen spray, pay attention to whether there are people around them smoking or using lighters at close range, at this time, do not use sunscreen spray or stay away from the environment with fire sources to avoid accidents.
When the firefighters spray sunscreen spray on the chicken legs, the sunscreen spray attached to the surface of the chicken legs can be ignited, and it can be clearly seen from the lens that the pigskin sprayed with sunscreen spray has been scorched after the fire source, it is conceivable that when spraying sunscreen spray on the face, the hair will inevitably be contaminated with atomized particles, which may become a safety hazard.
Children should use sunscreen spray with caution
In the five sunscreen spray products that have been proven to have a flammable and flammable effect, including two special sunscreen sprays for children, the reporter saw that these products specifically suitable for children are marked on the product detail page with "suitable for babies over 6 months old" and "special for children, safe sunscreen" and other promotional words. However, some parents commented on the Internet that they used a special sunscreen spray for children on a trip, and the child kept coughing wildly after using it, accompanied by white lips and vomiting.
How should the sunscreen spray for the baby be used? Does the baby really need a large area of sunscreen on the face and limbs as introduced by the business? The reporter interviewed a dermatologist and learned that if the child goes to a place like the beach and the skin is exposed to unobstructed sunlight for a long time, it is necessary to use sunscreen products, but for children, not only do they need to apply enough evenly, but the thickness must be at least close to the thickness of a coin to have a sunscreen effect, and the spray-type sunscreen is difficult to use enough sunscreen. It is also not easy to spray evenly.
According to the dermatologist's demonstration of the evenness and thickness of the application, it is obvious that the skin on the back of her hand is pale and a little greasy. Dr. Wang reminded mothers that in the process of using sunscreen spray for children, in addition to avoiding the risk of inhalation and flammability of particulates, there is also a very important problem that the sunscreen spray is difficult to completely clean.
In order to make the reporter have a more intuitive feeling, Dr. Wang began to rinse the sunscreen spray that he applied thickly on the back of his hand with water, and after many rinses, it was confirmed that it could not be completely rinsed off.
Wang Jun, Chief Physician of the Department of Dermatology of Changsha Third Hospital: Ordinary water rinsing is definitely not good, and children still have to use makeup remover or amino acid cleanser and cleanser to clean.
Doctors also suggest that although children need sun protection, moderate sun exposure and exposure to sunlight are very conducive to children's growth. At present, clinical studies have found that many skin diseases are caused by vitamin D deficiency, and vitamin D deficiency is due to too little sun exposure.
Studies have shown that the ultraviolet rays that darken the skin are evenly distributed throughout the year, especially in spring, when the skin is most sensitive to these ultraviolet rays, because the time of exposure to these ultraviolet rays decreases during outdoor sports in winter, so the sensitivity of the skin to whitening increases. Dermatologists caution that in their clinical experience, vitamin D supplementation has led to symptomatic relief in many patients with pruritus skin disease, so it is important to follow the principle of moderation in sun exposure and sun protection.
Wang Jun, Chief Physician of the Department of Dermatology of Changsha Third Hospital: But like me, I may be more focused on physical sunscreen, but I will definitely go to the sun, because the sun and ultraviolet rays are indeed an indispensable substance in our lives.
Sunscreen sprays are convenient and easy to use, but if you don't follow safe usage methods, they can be a health hazard or even a danger. Consumers need to follow the advice of experts and doctors to use sunscreen spray reasonably and correctly. For sunscreen spray specially used for children, it is necessary to pay attention to safety, avoid misunderstandings, and let children run healthily in the sun while protecting from the sun.
(Source: Cover News)