This Zinc ingredient is nearly invisible and doesn’t impart a pasty or white look when applied to the skin. There is certainly nothing new about using zinc oxide for sun protection. You may remember going to the beach and seeing a lifeguard’s lips or nose coated with that gooey white stuff. And there’s nothing new about using zinc oxide for redness and irritated skin. If you’ve ever had a baby with diaper rash, you probably used zinc oxide. It’s the active ingredient in almost all diaper rash ointments.

We tend to think of these zinc products as heavy and almost sticky. The good news is that both zinc oxide and titanium dioxide have become available in so-called “micronized”, cosmetically acceptable forms during the last decade. Why is Zinc Oxide such a valuable sun blocker? It is a wonderful physical blocker, meaning that it simply reflects ultraviolet light off the skin surface, a mechanism which many dermatologists prefer to the so-called “chemical UV blockers” which work by actually absorbing the UV radiation into the molecules as they sit on the skin. Also, zinc is among the very best of ingredients to block out the UV-A rays, which are responsible for most of the skin aging changes that we see.