Author(s): Kylee Jamison, Taron Thang, Michael Orr
Mentor(s): Aaron Davis, Wendy Schatzberg, Vinodh Chellamuthu
Institution UTech
Skin cancer is the most common type of cancer worldwide, with North America having the third highest rates of melanoma, the most deadly type of skin cancer, in the world. Beyond that, Utah’s melanoma rates are more than double the national average. Skin cancer is a very serious and prominent disease that will affect 1 in 5 Americans at some point in their lives. Studies have shown that a lack of awareness and education about skin protection habits is a major contributor to this problem. Evidence suggests that using sunscreen properly is an essential skin cancer prevention habit that is often overlooked. Furthermore, research has shown that when people utilize wearable materials meant to remind them to reapply sunscreen, their likelihood of using sunscreen correctly increases significantly. Current solutions for mitigating sun related damage have been proven to be inaccurate, expensive, and have limited functionality for an active lifestyle. Creating a wearable, easy to use, cost effective, and environmentally friendly solution to this problem poses many challenges. These challenges include making a mixture that appropriately adheres to skin, and is resistant to water, sweat, etc. while being removable when necessary. Our solution is a photochromic dye mixture applied to the skin that alerts the wearer to excessive sun exposure, while having the ability to overcome the obstacles presented above. This mixture contains 10% photochromic dye and 90% Skin-Tac by mass percent composition. The photochromic dye reacts with UV light in relation to the concentration and/or length of exposure to UV light causing a change in color to occur. Higher concentration will result in an instantaneous change to a darker color and long exposure will result in a gradual change to a darker color. The dye mixture performed well, with the exception of the alcohol-based solution being soluble in alcohol-based sunscreen. This caused the mixture to be easily removable, and therefore not effective. To combat this issue, an organic, non-toxic, oil-based sunscreen was created to be used with the dye solution. Further research that needs to be done regarding these products includes the determination of an SPF value for the oil-based sunscreen and further verification that the dye performs as expected with the sunscreen to ensure that the solution is viable.