TAN OR SUNBURN?

Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 6, 20 February 1952, Page 6

TAN OR SUNBURN?

YOU CAN HAVE EITHER Severe sunburn brings nothing but pain. It gives you no added health at all. (States the New Zealand Health Departments Quarterly Journal ^Health")If you are taking your first sunI bathing exposure for the season and ' if you take it round the middle hours of the day as most folks seem to do at the beach, the chances are that after twenty minutes a perceptible pinkness will begin to appear. After 40 to 50 minutes there,ll be a vivid red. If you get to this stage you have already gone too far, and to persist longer will mean a very painful burn after about an hour or an hour and a half, with blistering. Stop between the pink and red stages — as soon as you can see pinkness is a good rule for safety. Then youil tan nicely as you slowly increase the time of exposure and get the maximum benefit. After you have developed your coat of tan, you can stand much longer periods of exposure. A sunburn is a true burn and should be treated as such. A very mild burn, where there are tightness and a feeling of heat but not real pain, could be treated with calomine lotion or lead lotion, if you have some with you, or soothed with cold cream or zinc cream. A more severe degree, with fiery redness and perhaps some blistering must be treated as for a fire burn. You will have baking soda in the house. Make a solution of this bicarbonate of soda, one dessertspooni'ul to the pint of warm water. Put strips of clean cloth or lint saturated in the baking soda solution over the burn and cover with oiled silk or paconette if you have it and cotton wool. If you have no waterproof material moisten the cotton wool with the solution to l:eep the dressing wet as long as possible. If you haven't bicarbonate of scda with you, you could — provided the skin blisters are unbroken or there is just fiery redness — sponge with hot water and dry by gentle rubbing. Then dab methylated spirits on the unbroken skin to see if it will relieve the stinging. Then use a tannic acid jelly, or failing that, cold strong brewed tea. If you don't want to use tannic acid you could try cod liver oil as a dressing. They are all useful dressings for a bad sunburn — baking soda solution, or tannic acid jelly or cold strong brewed tea, or cod liver oil — but the baking soda solution wet dressing is to be preferred.