What this publication is
Waterproof SPF is a field guide to what happens to sun protection when it is actually being used. Not in a laboratory, not for the twenty minutes a demonstration assumes, but in water, in sweat, under a wetsuit, under a rucksack strap, on a bike, on a boat, at altitude, on snow, in the tropics, over eight hours.
It exists because the central word in the category is a deception. "Waterproof" is not a permitted claim on a sunscreen in the UK or the EU, for the good reason that no sunscreen is waterproof. Unpicking that, and everything that follows from it, is the founding purpose of this publication and the reason it is published at this address.
It is published by Northbank Media.
How it is organised
- Conditions files name a real activity or environment and set out the ultraviolet load, the water and sweat exposure, the friction, the duration, what fails first and the protection strategy, with a reapplication clock showing what degrades over hours under that condition.
- Standards notes take a claim printed on packaging and state what it legally certifies and what it does not, across the UK and EU, the United States and Australia.
- Field craft covers the mechanics that decide whether protection works: quantity, reapplication, textile, reflection, the ultraviolet index, and the sites everyone misses.
What we never do
- We never name, rate, rank, score or recommend a sunscreen, a brand or a retailer. We have tested nothing, so we have nothing to rank.
- We never publish an SPF measurement, a laboratory result, a retention percentage or a test figure of our own.
- We never invent a statistic, a study or a rate. Where a number would normally appear, we describe the mechanism and the published standard, and say what is not verifiable.
- We never give diagnostic guidance about anyone's skin, and we do not publish self assessment checklists. That belongs with a GP.
- We never run advertising networks or AdWords.
How this is funded, stated plainly
Being clear about money is a condition of being useful about claims. The model has three parts, and two of them are not live yet.
1. An affiliate disclosure layer, restricted by policy
Where affiliate arrangements are used, they are restricted strictly to categories assessed against published criteria, for example rated ultraviolet protective clothing assessed against a textile standard. They are never applied to a named sunscreen product, because we do not assess named products and would not link to one we had not.
Any page carrying such a link says so on the page. No affiliate arrangement is currently live. When one is, this section will name the category and the criteria before the link appears anywhere.
2. A newsletter with a labelled sponsor line
The newsletter carries at most one clearly labelled sponsor line per issue, positioned after the editorial, never inside it, and never written by the sponsor. Rates are published on our sponsorship page rather than negotiated privately, so that a reader can see exactly what a sponsor did and did not buy. A sponsor buys a labelled line. A sponsor cannot buy a mention in an article, a change to an article, or a link on this site.
3. A paid listing tier for outdoor and watersports retailers
Planned rather than live. If it launches, it will be alphabetical, never ranked, admitted on disclosed criteria published in advance, and marked as paid. A listing will confer no editorial coverage of any kind.
What money cannot buy here
Coverage, a mention, a link, a change to an article, sight of an article before publication, or the removal of an inconvenient sentence. That is not a policy we intend to revisit.
Links on this site
One article on this site carries a single editorial link to an external commercial site. It is marked, and the article carries a disclosure block explaining it. Every other article on this site carries no commercial links of any kind and says so at the foot of the page.
Who writes it
Waterproof SPF is written and edited by the Northbank Media editorial team. We are not clinicians, not dermatologists and not a laboratory, and we do not present ourselves as any of those. Our competence is in reading standards, reading regulation and describing conditions accurately. Where a question is clinical, we point at the NHS, the British Association of Dermatologists or Cancer Research UK, and we do so because their guidance is maintained and reviewed and ours would not be.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, we want to know, and we would rather be told bluntly. Our approach to corrections, sourcing and claims is set out in our editorial standards, and the route in is the contact page.