Cotton Shoppers

Too much sun, too much noise while driving

Dr. Paul Lizzul, associate director of clinical research in dermatology at Tufts Medical Center, wasn’t surprised by my sunburn story. Turns out you can get too much sun while driving regardless of whether you have a sunroof.

“If you speak with any dermatologist, there’s going to be a consensus about a higher frequency of skin cancers or sun damage on the left side of someone’s face or arms just because there’s more sun exposure on that side when driving,’’ Lizzul said.

Personally, I like to hang my left elbow out the window, so I’m certainly getting more sun on that side of my body. But what are people supposed to do, put on sunscreen just to go driving?

The more Lizzul spoke, the less crazy that began to sound.

Car windows - and those in your home - are good at filtering out ultraviolet B rays, which cause sunburns. But car and home windows generally don’t filter out ultraviolet A rays, which penetrate deeper into the skin. Ultraviolet A rays, or UVA rays, suppress the immune system and can interfere with your body’s ability to protect against skin cancer, Lizzul said.

Source: Boston Globe

Style Debate: Wrinkle Free vs. Regular Cotton Shirts

by Joe

  As entertaining as the article is, it’s hyperbolic to the point of hyperventilation.  So what if they’re dipped in formaldehyde?  There’s a potential cancer risk in using your cell phone, and Akst makes it sound like you’re wearing the skin of a cadaver.  It’s chemically treated.  Just about everything is.  He talks of how bad these shirts smell, how they don’t breathe, and how they’re scratchy.  That’s not my experience.  He even says this applies to a shirt he bought from Nordstrom.  Sorry, but the Nordstrom Trim Fit wrinkle-free in my closet has never smelled like “ The New Jersey Turnpike around Exit 13 Is Ironing really that hard ?  It can be a bit of a pain, but if you set aside a time of the week (say, during the Sunday Night football game) it almost becomes ignorable.  Some people even LIKE to iron .  And while his view of the texture of a no-iron shirt might be a little overblown, they do feel different than a regular cotton dress shirt.  It seems like there’s some markup on wrinkle-free shirts too.  And y’know, more often than not they come out of the dryer and still need to be ironed.  Wrinkle-free should mean they won’t wrinkle.  Ever.