Editorial policy

This page sets out how Spf & Shore decides what to publish, how it handles being wrong, and where the money comes from. It is written to be checkable rather than reassuring.

Independence

No brand pays for placement, position, wording or inclusion on this site. We do not accept sponsored posts, paid reviews, or free product in exchange for coverage. No brand sees a page before it is published and no brand can request a change to one after.

Spf & Shore earns commission when a reader buys through a link, and that commission does not vary by which product we recommend — every product link on this site goes to the same retailer. The incentive to recommend one product over another for money does not exist here, and where it might in future, this page will say so. Affiliate disclosure.

The honest-claims boundary

Spf & Shore researches and recommends. It does not test, and it is not a medical authority. That single sentence governs everything else on this site, and it is repeated on how we choose and on about because it is the easiest thing to quietly drop.

Concretely, the following never appear on this site:

• Claims of testing. No "we tested", "field-tested", "lab-tested", "hands-on" or "in our testing". There is no lab and no test panel.
• Star ratings, scores, review counts or aggregate ratings for our own picks. We have no rating methodology that would justify one.
• Claims of dermatologist authorship or review, unless a named, credentialed person has actually reviewed the page. None has.
• Prices, discounts or was-and-now claims. There is no live price feed on this site; every price area reads "Check price on Amazon".
• Invented author credentials. The byline is Janet H., the owner of the publisher, and nothing more is claimed.
• Before-and-after photographs, or any image implying testing we did not do.
• Fear-selling. The category is saturated with toxic-chemical framing. We state what the evidence does and does not show, including where it is contested.

Sourcing standards

Sun care sits inside what Google calls the Your Money or Your Life category — it concerns skin cancer risk, infant safety and pregnancy. We hold sourcing to that bar.

1. Every medical, safety or regulatory claim carries an inline citation to a primary or regulatory source — the FDA, the American Academy of Dermatology, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Skin Cancer Foundation, NOAA, the EPA, peer-reviewed literature, or the legislation itself.
2. Citations are named and linked in the body of the page, not buried in a footnote. You should be able to check us without searching.
3. We never present a third party's testing as our own. Correct: "Consumer Reports' laboratory testing found…". Not: "We found…".
4. Manufacturer claims are framed as claims. "Badger lists 22.5% non-nano zinc oxide", not "contains 22.5% zinc oxide".
5. Where the evidence is contested, we say so. The oxybenzone and coral question and the systemic-absorption question both have real scientific nuance, and overstating either direction is a trust failure.
6. Reddit, TikTok, blog opinion, AI-generated summaries and other affiliate sites' conclusions are never a source for a factual claim.

Corrections

If we get something wrong, tell us: janet.hoyo@yahoo.com. We will correct it on the page it appears on, and the correction will be dated on that page rather than made silently.

Things worth reporting: a product that has been discontinued or reformulated, a label fact we have stated incorrectly, a source that no longer says what we say it says, a broken link, or a claim you think is not supported by the source we cited. All of those are useful and none of them are a nuisance.

Update cadence

• Every page carries a visible "Updated <month year>" stamp, and it reflects a genuine review rather than a redeploy.
• Buying guides and brand reviews are reviewed at least twice a year, and sooner after a formulation change, a discontinuation or a regulatory change we become aware of.
• Guides and explainers are reviewed annually, and immediately if a cited source changes.
• Regulatory content is reviewed whenever a jurisdiction changes its rules — reef-protection laws in particular are amended periodically and new jurisdictions are added.

Medical content

Nothing on this site is medical advice, and it cannot assess your situation. Where a topic warrants professional input — infants under six months, pregnancy, eczema, a diagnosed photosensitivity, a burn you are worried about, a new or changing mole — we say to ask a clinician, and we mean it rather than saying it to cover ourselves.

Who writes this

Every article, review and page on Spf & Shore carries the byline Janet H., the hands-on owner behind Janet Media Group, the publisher of this site. There is no expert panel and no anonymous contributor pool. About.