U.S. schools a battleground — for sunscreen
WASHINGTON— State Rep. Craig Hall of Utah has four red-headed school-age children, lives in the state with the highest rate of melanoma in the United States, and buys sunscreen “in the Costco size.” He is an unabashed proponent of sun protection.
But when Hall, a Republican, introduced legislation this year to allow kids to bring sunscreen to school — which starts Aug. 21 in his district — he said his fellow state lawmakers were a little less enthusiastic. “My colleagues’ first reaction to this bill was mostly, ‘Seriously? We need a bill for this?’ ”
Like ibuprofen or hay fever medication, sunscreen is considered an over-the-counter drug by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and therefore by almost all schools. That means kids can’t bring it to school without a doctor’s note, and even then must see the school nurse in order to use it.
The result: Teachers leading a sunny field trip are free to cover themselves in a thick protective layer of sunscreen. But in most states, children can’t follow suit.
In Indianapolis, for instance, kids go back to school July 31 — the height of summer — but they must have a doctor’s note to bring sunscreen to school, and visit the school nurse to put it on.
That is beginning to change. In the past four months, Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Utah and Washington have enacted laws declaring students may use sunscreen in school and at after-school activities, no doctor’s note required. Those states join California, New York, Oregon and Texas, which already have lifted the ban on sunscreen in school. The laws in Arizona, New York and Washington also stipulate that kids may bring and use sunscreen at summer camps.
Sunscreen legislation is also in the works in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. A sunscreen bill that cleared the Senate in Mississippi died in a House committee, and a bill introduced in Georgia has stalled.
Legislators say they are motivated by angry parents whose children suffered serious sunburns at school events where sunscreen was banned. “If you just Google ‘kid sunburned at school,’ ” Hall said, “some of the stories are horrifying.”
In Rhode Island, Democratic state Rep. David Bennett said the state’s 2016 law requiring daily school recess makes it more important that kids be allowed to put on sunscreen by themselves. “The kids are impatient. They’ve got 20 minutes. They’re not going to stand in line for 20 minutes” while a teacher applies sunscreen, said Bennett, whose bill passed the lower house and is now in the Senate. “By the time she gets done with the last kid, the 20 minutes is going to be over.”
But Bennett ran into opposition from the Rhode Island association of school nurses, which opposes the bill. Unlike other state sunscreen laws, Rhode Island’s legislation has no language to address liability for school employees who may apply sunscreen and for school districts. The school nurses group also believes sunscreen should be kept out of classrooms because of potential allergies among students.
Bruce Brod, political advocacy chair for the Pennsylvania Academy of Dermatology and Dermatologic Surgery, said a serious allergy risk is unlikely. “A kid might be allergic to hair gel. The question is where do you draw the reasonable line?”
Beyond media coverage of kids with lobster-red sunburns, the legislation has been driven by an advocacy campaign from a coalition of medical groups including the American Academy of Dermatology Association and the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery Association, whose members decided in March to push for sunscreen legislation. The dermatologic surgery group wrote model legislation and earmarked $30,000 (U.S.) in grants for state dermatology organizations to lobby for the bill. The dermatology association also provided advocacy grants to state groups.
The quick results — four state laws in three months — are because “it’s an issue that doesn’t seem to be politically divisive at all,” said Terry Cronin, a Melbourne, Fla., dermatologist and head of the advocacy working group for the dermatologic surgery society. “Everybody sees that kids need to be protected from skin cancer and they should be protected with sunscreen.”
“A kid might be allergic to hair gel. The question is where do you draw the reasonable line?” BRUCE BROD DERMATOLOGY ADVOCACY CHAIR