UKC

Am I being overly critical, or is my assessment of this advisory piece from the UIAA as being basically content​ free reasonable?

https://www.theuiaa.org/uiaa/uiaa-safecom-answers-your-questions-suncream-a...

"We don't know" would have covered it.

Or don't worry about it.

And how hard would it be to measure this? Get slings, put sunscreen on them, break them in the test rig. Job done. The most expensive part would be buying the sunscreen itself!

C'mon you're all being a bit unfair

The bit about sunscreen getting in your eyes and stinging a bit might have been based on experience and the advice to take a hanky is very helpful...

Sure, and exactly how many sunscreen products are there on the world market? The ingredients are proprietry and only have to be declared to the competent authority so they would have to test all makes.

The most expensive part would be paying a lab to test thousands of slings, a seven-figure bill would be likely (the UIAA have no testing facilities or qualified staff).

The best you can say is that despite the long history of sunscreen use by climbers we are not aware of equipment failure, injury or death resulting from sunscreen damage to climbing equipment.

Considering humans, placements, rock and weather are not subject to CE testing and three sigma quality checks by the manufacturer it's not worth worrying about. Not that you appear worried though!

Given that the state of the art is 'no-one knows', a statement along the lines of 'we've tested these five popular brands and they all had no effect; the properties of other brands remains unknown' would be a fairly useful thing. 

Climbers could use that to make judgements about whether they wanted to make sure they used those known brands, and/or extrapolate to other brands at their own risk.  It's not terribly unlike the use of inks to mark ropes - only a few combinations have been tested so I make sure I stick to known safe ones.

"Furthermore sunscreen can be very debilitating if entering ones eyes through perspiration"

It's a lot less debilitating than skin cancer, I'd imagine.

Apart from the howls of rage from the other manufacturers who weren't tested (or threats of legal action) there's the slight problem that the most popular brands are probably Chinese, Japanese, American, Australian etc which isn't going to tell the UKC punters anything.

And then there's the nano-particles..........

And smearing greasy sh*t all over the holds. .......

We have a snapping rig at work which I could probably use on my lunch if I asked nicely and my fee would only be 6 figures  

I was thinking along the same lines....

But surely there's a fairly short list of active ingredients and compatible solvents used.  Why not just say that there's nothing in the known chemistry that would suggest a problem, and we're not aware of any reports suggesting otherwise.

Deet, on the other hand...

Aminobenzoic acid
Avobenzone
Cinoxate
Dioxybenzone
Homosalate
Meradimate
Octocrylene
Octinoxate

Octisalate
Oxybenzone
Padimate O
Ensulizole
Sulisobenzone
Titanium dioxide
Trolamine salicylate
Zinc oxide

In reply to Dave Garnett:

Well those are the active ingredients approved by the FDA for use in the USA, the list of permitted inactive ingredients (solvents etc) is almost certainly far, far longer.

And what's approved in other countries I'm not bothering to look!