Talk:Sun protective clothing

bad article?
This article appears to be inconsistant with Wikipedia is not a soapbox Section 3, as well as Wikipedia is not a repository of links.

It appears that the only purpose of this article is to advertise a list of companies that sell clothing. Although it has many cites and wikilinks, it doesn't cite the actual claim of original development or that certain fabrics have more "blocking power". The section on UPF rating could easily be merged into sunscreen, as it is the only potential section of the article that contains useful information. The rest seems to be filler to justify a set of links to commercial sites. I would request the article be deleted, and perhaps the UPF section be merged into sunscreen if so desired.

This article was not linked to anything else until a day or two ago. Pharmboy 22:44, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Remove the commercial links
I see someone has removed the delete tag. I still feel the commercial links need to be removed, but wanted to raise the issue before making an edit. The page is still against wiki policy in several regards. Pharmboy 13:34, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't know if I'm doing this right but I agree: The commercial link to the shade is entirely inappropriate and should be deleted. Furthermore, someone should contact the company and let them know how inappropriate it was.  Sdc100 (talk) 15:42, 17 July 2008 (UTC)sdc100

keep
This is an important, appropriate article. Recent news reports in the US claim that many UPF labeled garments do not perform at the claimed UPF level. It would be good for the article to have more examples of real UPF ratings for various special garments. Even more important, it should have a big section of information about the real UPF measurements of typical ordinary garments. It seems like the key piece of practical advice people need to know is: if you hold a piece of cloth up to the light and can readily see through it, it probably does not offer much UPF.-69.87.203.105 11:23, 25 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I believe that the practical advice you suggest is not correct - it is actually one of the missperceptions about clothing and UV protection. Specifically, if visible light passes through a fabric, it does not necessarily mean a similar level of UV is also passing through the fabric.  The UV transmission through the fabric could be significantly more or significantly less - you can't actually tell unless you run a test on a spectrophotometer.  It is very similar to sunglasses - if you are able to see through them (visible spectrum) it does not necessarily mean that the sunglasses are not blocking UV. Jb2012a (talk) 05:02, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

great article, if info added
I was going to post the following comment for discussion anyway, before I noticed the "bad article?" section..it's in a way something that would help fix that..what I wanted to suggest, if people can find it, is the following:

General guidelines on how protective various types of fabrics are. 100% exact numbers are NOT needed..just general ranges of UV blocking factors for different types of (the most common types of) clothing material would be _extreamly_ helpful for consumers in general and wikipedia readers in particular, along the lines of a list of say the top 4 to 10 types of fabric like:

"**13.5 ounce fabric cotton denim generally: (protection factor goes here)


 * 7.5 oz. cotton fabric flannel has: (protection factor goes here)

..." including for some non-cotton commonly used fabrics, etc..

and so forth. (these are from real items from a certain online retailer whose name I need not mention since I'm not a clothes expert and needed real examples) That would be so useful to know how well they compare (even roughly, no need to be perfectly exact) to one another so people can have the info they need (an encyclopedia needs to be relevant to what's useful in people's lives including non-academic, practical lives) and knowing how this or that particular fabric compares to say a 15 SPF lotion on bare skin, etc, would be a very helpful comparison to know (I seem to recall reading somewhere that most clothes are better b studies etc...) Thanks to anyone who can add such useful info to this wikipedia entry.

That would make it far less commercial AND far far more useful to wikipedia readers. Harel 02:48, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I have data from an unpublished study in the US in which 200 articles of regular summer clothing were tested for their UV protection levels. Garments were selected according to the popularity of the brand and the design.  The results from the study were consistent with previous studies conducted in Australia and Germany.  Specifically, a modest majority of the summer clothing fabric was less protective than a SPF 30 sunscreen.  Typically, summer clothing is made from light weight, light colored, open weave, knit cottons.  All of these attributes tend to lead to relatively poor levels of sun protection.  In addition, the design of the clothing was evaluated and found to expose a fair amount of skin to the sun, particularly the arms (no sleeves or short sleeves) and the neck (no collar).  The design issues were as important as the UV transmission through the fabric in terms of their contribution to the total UV exposure that would result from wearing these typical summer garments.  Jb2012a (talk) 05:14, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

How much of this is just marketing hype?
Am I the only one coming to this article asking this question? The most important thing to add to his article would be to list peer reviewed studies (and possibly summarize results in a table) of how regular clothing compares with SPF clothing. I have never heard of anyone getting a sunburn through normal cotton clothing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.61.205.59 (talk) 14:49, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

UPF info from Consumer Reports
Belated thanks for all the comments above. I just added the following to the Sunscreen and Sun protective clothing articles:
 * According to recent testing by Consumer Reports, UPF ~30 is typical for protective fabrics, while UPF ~6 is typical for standard summer fabrics.

Hope this helps, at least as a start. —Patrug (talk) 23:50, 20 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Where did you see that "UPF ~30 is typical for protective fabrics, while UPF ~6 is typical for standard summer fabrics" in the reference you mention? I couldn't find a mention of "6", "cloth", "fabric", or "UPF" in the article. Franck Dernoncourt (talk) 18:39, 26 May 2018 (UTC)