If you work outside,
this is PPE

If you work on sites, farms, boats, roofs or hills, you’re getting several times the annual UV dose of someone who works indoors — and it lands on the same few square inches every day: face, ears, neck, forearms. Outdoor workers have markedly higher rates of the skin cancers that come from cumulative exposure, and it’s the most under-managed occupational risk in the trades.

The frustrating part: it’s the cheapest risk on the whole site to control.

Why nobody does it

Be honest about the real reasons, because they’re fixable:

• “Sun cream is for beaches.” UV comes through cloud and works all year. The dose that ages and damages is the everyday one, not the fortnight in Spain.
• “It’s greasy and it stings.” Fair — most of it is. That’s chemical-filter sunscreen sweating into your eyes. Mineral zinc sits on the skin and doesn’t migrate.
• “It’s a faff.” Ten-step skincare is a faff. One swipe from a tin in the van door pocket while the kettle boils is not.
• “Blokes don’t need it.” UK men die of melanoma at roughly 70% higher rates than women. The belief that male skin is somehow tougher is exactly backwards — and it’s costing lives, mostly male ones.

You wouldn’t use a grinder without glasses. The sun throws more energy at your face in a week than that grinder ever will.

The routine that survives real work

• One application before work — face, ears, back of the neck. Thirty seconds, same time as the first brew.
• Keep the tin where you’ll see it — van door, kit bag, bench. Sealed metal survives all three.
• Top up at lunch in high summer if you’re outside all day — mineral zinc reapplies over sweat without stinging.
• Hat and glasses do the rest. SPF isn’t a substitute for shade; it’s the layer for the skin that’s always exposed.

For employers: sun protection sits squarely inside duty-of-care for outdoor crews, the same as any other exposure control — and it’s the one your team will quietly thank you for in twenty years.