A school policy may have two sisters staying out of the sun for the rest of the summer.
The sisters, Violet and Zoe Michener, were rushed to the hospital after being severely sunburned after a field day at school. There school, located in Tacoma, Washington bans children from applying sunscreen without a doctors note so they were not allowed to reapply their sunscreen. And to make matters worse, Zoe suffers from albinism, therefore her skin is extremely sensitive to the sun.
According to Dan Voelpel, a spokesman for Tacoma School District, they are numerous additives in sunscreen that can possibly cause allergic reactions in kids.
If you think this doesn’t make sense, you may be surprised to find out that California is the only state that doesn’t require kids to have a note for their use of sunscreen.
“Having a sunburn in childhood dramatically increases your risk of skin cancer later in life,” said dermatologist Doris Day.
Yet, Day believes a ban on sunscreen is too extreme.
“I can’t see any justification for any school to tell a child that they are not allowed to apply sunscreen,” she said.