With the official start of summer only a couple weeks away, vacationers are preparing their bathing suits and beach bags for trips to all sorts of shorelines and coasts. And though the warm air and crescendo of falling waves are unquestionably alluring, two factors are certain to annoy beachgoers everywhere: sunburn and sand. While a wide variety of sunscreens have made sunburn easily preventable, a new type of product has emerged to keep sand from clinging to skin.
Though it may feel good between the toes, sand can be a real nuisance. It mixes with sunscreen to form a gritty, scratchy paste, and gets everywhere – on food, in the car and down the shorts. Of course, with young children, the sand problem is magnified by a factor of about a thousand. Somehow, no matter how many times a parent bathes a child, there’s always little grains turning up days after a trip to the beach. But a number of new inventions are emerging to make wiping away sand quick, easy and effective. Two similar products that fight off the pesky particles are Surfer’s Secret Sand Eliminator and Sand-Off™ Body Wash.
The plant-derived, talc-free Surfer’s Secret Sand Eliminator is referred to as what “surfers use to get clean”. A person simply squeezes out a quarter-size portion of the lotion and applies it to sandy areas. As the user wipes the mixture away with a hand or towel, the sand falls right off the skin. One of the inventors of Surfer’s Secret, Gail Greenwood, designed the concoction after discovering a little-known trick to remove sand without water. She and her marketing partner then brought a dermatologist onboard who added grape seed oil and aloe vera to make the solution soothing and anti-inflammatory. Both partners claim to use it on their kids regularly, and they say it’s great for getting into the small areas between fingers and toes, and cleaning up when changing children out of swim diapers or bathing suits. Surfer’s Secret Sand Eliminator is available for $3.50 (for a 1.5-ounce bottle) or $7.00 (for a 6-ounce bottle) plus shipping and handling from the inventor’s Web site.
Similarly, children also played a part in motivating two Rehoboth Beach, Del., inventors to create their sand eliminator - the Sand-Off™ Body Wash. When applying powder during a diaper change at the beach, one of the inventors noticed that clinging sand dropped off the skin easily. The inventors soon started using powder to clean sand off the body – before realizing that the powder was both messy and inconvenient to apply. After experimenting with different combinations for months, the inventors devised a blend of powders that removed sand effectively even in the presence of suntan lotion and perspiration. They also created a terry cloth mitt to evenly apply the powder – breaking the bond between the sand and the skin. A single pack containing the mitt (designed to last an entire beach season) and a package of powder (good for 30 to 40 uses) can be purchased on the inventor’s Web site for $9.99 plus shipping and handling.
