BRUSH ON BLOCK® Founder and CEO Andrea Wetsel's Sun Care Story
Fourteen years ago, my husband Jess and I moved from Texas to Portland, Oregon with our two young daughters. With our move, we were making a conscious decision to raise our children in the Pacific Northwest, where we could better enjoy the great outdoors. At the time, I had the naïve assumption that because Oregon wasn’t as hot or as sunny as Texas, we didn’t need sunscreen.
Once I realized the importance of daily sun protection, I lived the everyday battle of getting it on our young girls. Around this time, our oldest daughter developed an allergy to many chemical sunscreen products, which made sunscreen even more difficult for our family.
I set about educating myself on the different types of sunscreen and how to use them, and I learned some important lessons along the way. The question that I kept asking was, “If we all know that we should wear sunscreen, why don’t we?” Most people know that if we do not protect our skin, we run the risk of sunburn, skin cancer and premature aging. Then why isn’t it more of a priority?
It isn’t just about sunburn or aging. When you realize that skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the US, more than all other cancers combined, and that one in five Americans will be diagnosed with skin cancer in the course of a lifetime, you become pretty passionate about sun protection. Just stop and think about that for a moment – imagine you and your four closest friends or family members, then imagine that one of you will develop skin cancer, and that is pretty startling. One person dies of melanoma every hour, yet it is the most preventable form of cancer, when proper precautions are taken. Why would we not do all we could to take those precautions?
We know that we should wear sunscreen but we don’t, because the typical sunscreens are greasy and messy. They smell and are difficult to apply and reapply. Many clog your pores and run in your eyes when swimming or sweating, or contain chemical sunscreen ingredients. I founded BRUSH ON BLOCK® to overcome all those common objections and to make sun protection easy, with the goal of getting everyone to wear sunscreen every day.
Being sun smart doesn’t mean you can’t have an active lifestyle. You just need to take proper precautions, including using sunscreen, and BRUSH ON BLOCK makes it easy.
Andrea Wetsel, Founder and CEO
BRUSH ON BLOCK®
