Back view of woman against sun burns on her back.

ScienceOctober 5, 2017

About that Stuff story on ‘edible sunblock’

Mark Hanna

Guest writer

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Back view of woman against sun burns on her back.

In any country, Stuff’s news story assessing ‘edible sunscreen’ would be questionable. In New Zealand, the melanoma capital of the world, it’s downright irresponsible, writes Mark Hanna.

I have a mental checklist of bits of my body I must not forget to put sunscreen on. The back of my neck, the tops of my ears, under my chin, the backs of my knees… Each one comes with its own painful memory of the time I forgot and regretted not being more thorough.

One place I still consistently fail to apply sunscreen is the inside of my stomach. But I can now relax: edible sunscreen is here!

Stuff published an article yesterday morning about a new supplement from GO Healthy called “Go Sun UV Protect”, which is apparently the “first of the so-called ‘edible sunscreen’ products to hit the New Zealand market”.

Stuff quotes GO Healthy’s technical support manager Janeen Howard:

“Advantages of sun protection you swallow are that it lasts for 24 hours, is not affected by water or sweat, and protects all parts of the body”

Sounds pretty good, right? And the nice big picture of the packaging in the article has “Clinically Researched NutroxSun™” written on it so it’s evidence-based, right?

Well, I have to say I’m not convinced. And only partly because of the misleading advertising of GO Healthy products I’ve seen in the past.

While it does note Cancer Society reservations, the Stuff article gives them equal billing alongside an “independent lab trial” that was apparently conducted on the pill’s main ingredient in 2015. Unfortunately, the article is incredibly light on details (I have a sneaking suspicion that the author may not have read the research), but here’s what it does say:

“An independent lab trial of NutroxSun in Italy in 2015 found the onset of sunburn was delayed by 30 percent after two months of daily use.”

After two months of daily use doesn’t sound like quite the same promise as “it lasts for 24 hours”. Frankly it sounds like an expensive waste of time compared with just putting sunscreen on and not taking the pill, but maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, after reading that there’s been a trial I did what I always do and went hunting for the study. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to have been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, which is frankly a pretty big red flag. Thanks to Thomas Lumley for pointing me to the promotional PDF published by the company that came up with the ingredient “NutroxSun”.

So, assuming this research’s results are reliable, if you take this pill every day for two months you can expect it to be like you’re wearing sunscreen with an SPF of about 1.3 or 1.4. For comparison, your naked skin is SPF 1 and the Cancer Society recommends using sunscreen with SPF of at least 30.

If you take a pill every day for two months (at a low, low price of around $73.80 for two 30 capsule bottles), then… well, you’ll still have to use sunscreen if you want to avoid sunburn. Just like you would if you hadn’t spent enough money to buy over a week’s worth of food on a bunch of pills you don’t need.

Interestingly, and despite the Stuff article saying otherwise, this isn’t the first time the idea of “edible sunscreen” has come to the melanoma capital of the world. You might remember in 2014 when a bunch of news media were talking about “drinkable sunscreen” from a company called Osmosis Skincare. Their product, “Harmonized Water”, is just slightly less useful than Go Sun UV Protect, by virtue of it being plain old water.

I definitely remember when this happened, because I complained to both the Advertising Standards Authority and Medsafe about it. I’m a bit surprised Stuff doesn’t remember it too, given they wrote about it at the time.

The claim that this “is the first of the so-called ‘edible sunscreen’ products to hit the New Zealand market” has arrived with rather perfect timing. It came just the morning after I sent a three year follow-up email to Medsafe about the complaint I lodged in September 2014 regarding Osmosis Skincare’s “Harmonized Water” products. Because our current anti-quackery laws aren’t working.

I’ve also followed up with the Advertising Standards Authority, as it seems Osmosis Skincare has recently stopped complying with an upheld complaint I made against them in 2014.

So we won’t need to add “pop a pill” to our “slip, slop, slap, and wrap” mantra. If anything, this should be a reminder to be deeply sceptical of these sorts of health claims.

The Spinoff’s science content is made possible thanks to the support of The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, a national institute devoted to scientific research.

ScienceOctober 3, 2017

Black, bendable, lightweight and cheap: inside the coming solar panel revolution

Vanessa Young

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When it comes to solar panels, the future is flexible. Vanessa Young discovers how a MacDiarmid project is unlocking the possibilities of a new generation of solar cell technology.

When we imagine solar panels, we think of hard rectangle frames, sitting upright on roofs, or spread out across expanses of deserts.

But imagine flexible, bendy solar panels, supple enough to skin a curved roof, pliable enough to be rolled up and transported easily. Lightweight enough to be a thin film for the roof of a tent. And portable enough to be rolled out to generate power for emergency relief operations, or taken into remote areas.

Printable solar materials that will allow all of this is closer than we think. Victoria University associate professor Justin Hodgkiss, lead researcher in a MacDiarmid Institute project investigating the possibilities presented by ‘printable photovoltaics’, says they will be low cost and could replace silicon as the next generation of photovoltaic (solar energy) materials.

“Silicon cells are getting cheaper but still require a high-temperature, high vacuum manufacturing process. For solar energy to be really accessible it needs to be much cheaper and faster to manufacture.”

He says these printable semiconductors, including polymers and nanoparticles, can potentially be manufactured on a roll, cutting production costs.

“Their ease of transport and light weight also mean it is feasible for these to be manufactured in New Zealand and shipped anywhere in the world.”

New generation flexible solar cell material. Photo: Eight19 Ltd

Shiny is the enemy of good

When we see photos of those bright shiny swathes of solar farms, we don’t automatically think of their shininess as a problem. But Hodgkiss says an ideal solar panel would look black.

“Every bit of light that reflects off a solar panel is light not transformed into energy. When no light bounces off it means all visible light is getting in.”

This is where nanotechnology comes in. He compares the idea to radio antennae on the roof of a building.

“When you see large antennae on the top of buildings, their size is related to the radio frequencies they’re tracking. Radio waves are of the order of metres, so the antenna discs are this size. But optical wavelengths are in the order of hundreds of nanometres.”

He says the MacDiarmid teams working on this are effectively creating tiny antennae that capture light and can direct it inside the solar panels.

“We’re making nano-patterns that make sure that light gets in and is not bounced away, and that capture and focus the light waves directly where it is needed in the solar panels.”

Blitzing with lasers

Figuring out which new materials are going to work best as solar panels involves a bit of trial and error, and a lot of very precise laser measurement. And this has shaped the career of Hodgkiss, who switched from straight chemistry to the use of physics techniques to trial new solar contenders.

“When I started out as a chemist I was looking at molecular models for solar power conversion and trying to devise the best ‘recipe’. But I soon realised that real devices were already way more effective at solar energy conversion than our models were ever likely to be. So we changed our approach; instead, we tried to understand how real solar photovoltaic devices work, and when comparing lots of them, to find the perfect recipe. We study the cells by blitzing them with very short pulses of lasers – essentially doing strobe photography – and taking snapshots of the electricity being produced.

“So the MacDiarmid team is using lasers to understand where the energy losses are happening, where, for example, heat is being generated instead of electricity.”

The team also includes Professor Keith Gordon from Otago University, who is using lasers to help to see the structure of materials inside a solar cell.

Hodgkiss emphasises the NZ-wide nature of these projects. “Each of these solar projects involves researchers from universities up and down New Zealand who wouldn’t be working together if it wasn’t for the MacDiarmid funding the research and collaboration which enables them to connect.”

The Spinoff’s science content is made possible thanks to the support of The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, a national institute devoted to scientific research.