Is there really a difference between 30, 50 or even 100 SPF sunscreen? What about spray versus lotion? NBC Charlotte's Bill McGinty put his skin to the test.
He taped off his arms into five zones and applied different SPFs. One zone had no sunscreen at all. Then Bill sat out in the blazing sun for about an hour.
The UV index was high that day, in the 8 category, which means unprotected areas would burn in about seven minutes.
To be clear, Bill didn't move much, so he didn't sweat much. Plus, if he had been at the pool or the lake, he would have been in the water which would affect how well the sunscreens worked.
Wearing sunscreen is important as 5.4 million people get non-melanoma skin cancer every year. It's the most common type of cancer. In fact, one in five of us will get it before the age of 70. As for the more serious melanoma, one person dies from it every hour.
Medical studies from Penn State say you don't need more than a 30 SPF and should reapply every two to three hours.
After seven more hours, the results were in on Bill's skin. Zone five had no sunscreen and was burned. But the other areas were fine, no redness and no pain.
The take away? There was no difference between the 15 and 100 SPF and certainly no difference among the 30, 50 and 100. Bill said he paid triple the cost for the 100 SPF over the CVS brand SPF 15 and got the same protection during the hour-long test.