I am going to focus my project on sunscreen, and am still working on figuring out a specific point of view. I have a few ideas swirling around, but haven’t yet landed on how to take a critical approach to any of them.
- It feels like there’s a lot of conflicting information about sunscreen in general, and more specifically the ingredients that are used to protect skin from harmful UV rays. Some information seems to suggest that certain chemical blockers could have some effect on human hormone regulation, but other research mentions that any potential risk outweigh the cost of not wearing sunscreen and the risk of getting skin cancer. Is there a way to zero in on one conflict and dig into that?
- I have noticed a general belief that if you don’t burn, you don’t need for sunscreen as much as those that burn easily. On one hand, it seems like this is not true, because UVA rays don’t necessarily burn the skin but still cause damage. On the other hand, there is research that suggests getting sunburnt increases your risk of skin cancer. I wonder why certain people wear sun screen, and others don’t. For me it’s always been a given that it is necessary.
- Companies that make sunscreen are companies, and are profit driven. I wonder if there are any systems at play here below the surface. Do companies make sunscreen only last 80 minutes so that users need to reapply more frequently? Or is this truly a limitation of the science and formula development?
- Some ingredients in sunscreen are detrimental to the environment.
- Different countries use different systems for determining a sunscreen’s efficacy in blocking UVA rays. In the US it’s determined with the Critical Wavelength, and if it meets this criteria, it is deemed “broad spectrum. In Europe, it’s required to meet a Critical Wavelength, and additional criteria as well. In Japan and Korea, the PA+ rating system is used ( I still need to do some more research to understand how this is determined).
The first map is asking the question of who are the stakeholders of sunscreen? What are different stakeholders looking for in a sunscreen? There are a few more ideas in this figma, but the two main stakeholders I explored were humans that use sunscreen and companies that make it.
https://www.figma.com/file/aW3xVAs1fapX0GyrIgrUc0/system-diagram-1?node-id=0%3A1
The other map was vaguely trying to answer why some uses sunscreen and others don’t.
https://www.figma.com/file/RaIUL76a0gdlBlyKBwmv3H/system-diagram?node-id=0%3A1
