How much UVA protection do our organic sun lotions give?

When buying organic sun lotion, or any sunscreen for that matter, people are often only interested in the SPF of the products they are considering. Unfortunately, this means that they are overlooking UVA protection, as the SPF of a sun lotion only reflects its efficacy against UVB rays (the ones which cause sunburn). Read more about the SPFs of our natural sun lotions.

UVA rays, on the other hand, do not cause such obvious immediate damage, but could have much more serious implications for the long term. They penetrate deeply into skin and affect the DNA of the cells within. Most worryingly, it is believed that this may be linked with causing cancer, along with having aesthetic effects such as premature ageing.

UVA protection

There is no international standard for UVA protection, as there is with the familiar SPF for UVB rays. However, there is a star rating system which was acquired by Boots in the early 1990s, and this is what many companies use. This is only a proportional system, however, which compares UVA protection against the UVB protection offered by the sun lotion. This means that it can be better to get a higher SPF with 3 star protection than a lower SPF with 4 star protection.

Unfortunately, this proportional system is often very confusing for consumers, who only want to be sure their sunscreens are giving them effective protection from the sun. There have been calls for ‘absolute’ systems which are not relational but as yet there has not been any such system adopted in the UK.

Our organic sun lotions have undergone testing to show what level of protection from UVA rays they provide. The research reveals that the UVA protection of each product is between 70% and 75% of its UVB protection – a level which easily exceeds industry standards.

See a full list of our organic sun lotions

Why Green People Organic Sun Lotions?
Ingredients Avoided In Our Organic Sun Lotions
How much UVA protection our organic sun lotions provide
Why Green People’s organic sun lotions only go up to SPF25
About Green People’s organic sun lotions for children