Nature Friendly Date Palm Sunscreen

Imagine a sunscreen that both protects our skin from harmful UV rays and ecofriendly, marine life caring.

In this project, a sunscreen will be made using date palm kernel oil. We choose date palm kernel oil because it does not contain harmful chemicals that sunscreens on the market include. Those chemicals are harmful to us and marine life. That’s why we use date palm kernel oil instead of chemicals used in other sunscreens. So, the saturated fatty acids in date palm kernel oil protect our skin from UV rays and the marine environment. In the stage of getting the date palm kernel oil, it's going to involve the soxhlet device in the mass production stage. But in the prototype, it is going to be taken by ourselves in the chemistry laboratory with teachers.

The effects of UV rays have become a serious problem. Especially UVB rays are carcinogenic; 60% of malignant melanoma cases, which is a type of skin cancer, and 90% of non-melanoma skin cancers are caused by UV rays. Skin cancer is not the only effect of UV rays, they cause DNA damage, photoaging, and other skin conditions. Moreover, avobenzone, octocrylene, and oxybenzone are the chemicals used in sunscreens that enter the blood. Avobenzone and octocrylene cause DNA damage and the photodegradation of avobenzone cause skin irritation and photoallergy. Oxybenzone affects testosterone hormone in males and pregnancy in females. But there is another problem. The chemicals in the sunscreens have side effects on both us and marine life. Those chemicals cause corals the bleach which is killing them. Corals are so essential for marine life because they provide habitats for many marine organisms and they supply nitrogen and other essential nutrients for marine food chains. We aim to improve a sunscreen that protects our skin from UV rays and has no side effects on us and the marine environment.

Sunscreen is a product used by almost everyone in daily life. That's why we think that the sunscreen we produce will be beneficial to the general public.

As the first step, we observed our environment as young three researchers who are sensitive to environmental and global problems. We conducted researches and sustainable development goals of the United Nations. In the end, we tackled a problem that most people do not pay attention to it and consider as a small problem, but which actually has great effects. We discussed this problem in our own way. Because for all problems we believe that, it doesn’t matter that it’s big or small, solutions should be found. We did research about the effects of UV rays on the skin to understand what is the problem we are facing. And also we did research about the effects of the chemicals on humans and marine life. Combining our research, we searched for a replacement of those chemicals that can protect human skin from UV rays and has no side effects on humans and marine life. We found out that date palm kernel oil meets our conditions. As a result, we decided to create a project using it.

We are three high school girls who want to achieve our idea and chase opportunities and possibilities for this. This is the first time that we are entering this competition and it is the first time that we are doing a project about this topic and we are currently trying to develop our product.

Two different technologies can be used in this project. The first one is Soxhlet Device. This device uses solvents as toluene hexane. Solvent vapor is sent to the palm kernel to be extracted. It condenses and returns to the solvent balloon. This cycle repeats for a long time. Along with the Soxhlet device, a precision balance (measures 1% of a milligram) is also required. The Soxhlet device provides a highly accurate measurement. It gives a very small margin of error. We are planning to use the Soxhlet device when we put our sunscreen into mass production. The second technology is steam distillation. Steam is created in the balloon. The resulting steam is sent to the palm. The steam formed there is condensed in the cooler. With this method, essential oils are isolated. Shredding or grinding the seed increases the yield of this stage. It will be necessary to use it with a digital scale. We are planning to use this technology while producing our prototype.

We are currently not serving anyone. Our product is still in the developing stage and we expect to develop it in the next year too since it takes a while to create a product. However if our product is ready to launch, we plan to serve 50 people to observe the effects of our product. Also, we want to work with marine biologists to investigate the effects on the marine environment.  

We want to create a product that increases our living standards and that we can use safely. Also, since we are not alone in this world, we want to have an impact on nature because we have to determine a nature-friendly life. If we manage to raise public awareness enough and show the importance of our product, we can have an impact on the health of society and nature when it is used.

We are still in the research and developing stage. We can not show you any physical progress because we don't have any physical prototype or product but our solution associated with UN goals called "Good  Health and Well-being" since we are developing a sunscreen to protect our skin from any health issues that UV rays can cause and "Life Below Water" because our sunscreen will have no side effects for the marine life, unlike other sunscreens.

For a while, our country (Turkey) is having economic problems. This situation causes us problems in today and the future. As a result of this, our country constrained the budget used for scientific research. Also, we are not supported enough because we are high school students. For example, we have some technical devices problems. All these difficulties affect our project.

We are three passionate researchers dedicated to our project. Our project is our priority and we do not neglect to take as much time as necessary. All of us are experienced and had worked on other projects before so all of us know what it takes to make a beneficial project. Even in the winter, the sunlight is blistering, and experiencing this in our daily life made us think about this solution. Also, we have seen the damage to marine life due to the mucilage formation in Bosphorus last year and we want to prevent any other damage that may occur to marine life again.

As a team, we think we are qualified for this prize. When we started developing this project, we had two goals and one of them was to make our sunscreen harmless to the environment. We are very sensitive to environmental problems, we were devasted to experience the mucilage that happened last year in the Marmara Sea. We want to help the environment in every way we can. The usage of sunscreens will increase due to the depletion of the ozone layer and if people continue to use the sunscreens that kill the corals, the marine life will be damaged even more. We want to prevent this scenario to happen and our sunscreen will be an excellent solution.