Archive for July 8th, 2008

Sunblock Solvent

To avoid sunburns, we use sunscreen.  Recently my wife bought a large bottle of NO-AD sunblock lotion.  It was highly rated by someone or something, so she thought she would try it.  It’s called NO-AD because they don’t advertise.

So we were at a place that gives you wristbands for admittance, and they write something on the plastic wristband.  It was written in permanent marker, and my wristband had gotten wet with no problems.  But after I applied this NO-AD sunblock, I noticed I had some darker spots on my skin.  I looked around and noticed that the permanent marker was running or bleeding off my wristband.  I thought “That’s a poor permanent marker to just be able to wash off with water.”  But after checking other people’s wristbands, I saw that mine was the only one with a problem.  So the only other conclusion was that the sunblock acted as a solvent for permanent marker.

I forgot about that incident until the next morning.  I did not put the NO-AD sunblock on myself, but I did put it on my children.  So the only place on my that had the NO-AD was the palm of one hand.  An hour later, I happened to hold a ballpoint pen.  It was the standard pen with the name of the hotel printed on it.  I’ve had it for a while and it never caused any problems.  But when I opened my hand to put the pen down, I noticed that the hotel name was now printed on my hand.  The ink from the pen’s shell, the ink that was used to print the hotel name and logo, had been partially dissolved by the sunblock and was now smeared on my hand.

So some ingredient in the sunblock is acting as a solvent to break down inks.  They could break into another market and increase their sales.  Just pour some sunscreen into a different bottle and label it as “permanent marker smearer” or something.

“Our skin has become as hot as an oven, Because of the burning heat of famine.”
– Lamentations 5:10