With the arrival of summer and a (hopefully) sunny vacation, many of us are rushing for sunscreen.
But we often do not know how this liquid was born, which helps us to fight against the dangers of exposure to the sun.
David Castello-Lopes lifts on Thursday at the microphone of Europe 1 the veil on his origins.
Who says summer often says great sun. And sometimes even sunburn. A short and long term danger against which there is a weapon: sunscreen. David Castello-Lopes goes back, in the program
Historically Vôtre
, to the origins of this liquid which protects our skin and our health against the dangers of the sun.
I revealed to you some time ago that I didn't like the Nazis very much.
But the second thing I hate the most after them is having fat on my face.
So I might as well tell you that sunscreen has been one of my worst enemies since childhood.
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I remember skiing when I was maybe eight, I would fall asleep thinking about that awful moment the next morning when my mother was going to spread this sticky milk on my face that clings to my eyebrows.
And for me, it weighed incredibly heavy in the balance of winter sports fun.
Because certainly, in winter sports, There is snow, it's cool.
But isn't the price to pay for this cool too high?
Even today, I ask myself the question.
And, even today, I put on as little sunscreen as possible.
The only exception I tolerated was in my teenage years, when sunscreen was one of the only valid excuses for having physical contact.
Of course if a girl said to me "Do you want me to put cream on you?", I would answer yes.
A first index 2 sunscreen
But the truth is that I would have also said yes if she had asked me "Do you want me to put you some beef bourguignon?".
But, then where does this hell fat come from?
There are several stories about the early days of sunscreen, but I picked one that comes up more often than the rest.
If I tell you about Graubünden, I know that some gourmets will think of dried meat.
But it's not just that.
Graubünden is above all a canton in eastern Switzerland, with mountains in particular.
And one of these mountains, on the border with Austria, is called the Pic du Bœuf, which in Romansh is called "Piz Buin".
It is a mountain of more than 3,000 meters.
And regularly, since the middle of the 19th century, there are mountaineers who climb it.
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In the 1930s, one of those people was a chemistry student named Franz Greiter. And, from what he said, Franz got a massive sunburn on the face while climbing Piz Buin. At that point, he thought to himself that it would still be cool if we could put on a cream that protects the mouth. So he got to work and in 1938 released what is often considered the world's first modern sunscreen: Gletscher Creme. Which means in French "ice cream". To give you an idea, ice cream had an index of 2.
To put it simply, a clue of 2 means that if you put on cream you will take twice as long to get sunburned than if you did not use cream.
If you typically burn in 10 minutes, with Screen 2 you will burn in 20 minutes.
With the index 50, you will burn in 50 times longer, that is to say in a little more than eight hours.
How do UV indices work?
A company was created to sell ice cream, it was aptly called Piz Buin, in homage to the mountain that caused the original sunburn.
This brand still exists today.
And the cream that my mother put on me when I was a child was often Piz Buin.
Then, innovation in sunscreen was on the one hand the invention of the sun protection index system.
It was invented by the same gentleman who invented ice cream, Franz.
On the other hand, techniques have developed to make sunscreen protect people better and better.
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One of the greatest advances from this point of view was the invention of so-called broad spectrum sunscreens in 1980. But what are they? There are many kinds of sun rays that hurt us. UV-B rays which cause sunburns which hurt and which are also the most carcinogenic. And UV-A is the one that penetrates deeper into the skin. They also give a bit of cancer, but it is especially them in particular that cause the skin to age prematurely. The faces of sailors all crumpled for example, it would rather be an effect of UV-A.
For a long time, creams only protected against UV-B. But broad-spectrum sunscreens protect against both. Which is much better. You can add to the sunscreen my technique, which consists of going to the beach with a shirt and pants, which not only protect against UV-A, UV-B, but also against the presence of grease on the skin. . It is ultra broad spectrum.