Many people prefer to use mineral sunscreens instead of chemical ones for safety and environmental reasons. In 2019 the FDA called on sunscreen manufacturers to provide more safety data on the chemical active ingredients. The agency said it was satisfied with the information it had on titanium dioxide and zinc oxide. The issue with the…
Catherine Roberts Catherine Roberts is a health and science journalist at Consumer Reports. She has been at CR since 2016, covering infectious diseases, bugs and bug sprays, consumer medical devices like hearing aids and blood pressure monitors, health privacy, and more. As a civilian, her passions include bike rides, horror films and fiction, and research…
Of course, it’s good to be prepared with the essentials. But ultimately, festivals are about having fun. Here’s a list of festival accessories you might like to have on hand purely for the joy of them. Kandi-making kits: Trading beaded bracelets is a hallmark of electronic music, but thanks to the Taylor Swift Eras tour,…
For me, a dryer lives and dies by its diffuser, and I’ve never seen one like this, which is actually two diffusers. In “diffuse mode,” it looks like any diffuser you’ve ever seen, with prongs to get right into the root to dry and help with volume. Dyson says this one is best for more…
When CR tests helmets for impact protection, we drop them onto a flat anvil at 14 miles per hour from four different angles and measure the energy that’s transferred through the helmet. Helmet style won’t change the results. But other factors, such as a helmet’s shape, may provide an additional safety benefit. “The best thing…
To address this, YouTube did not expedite the dispute process, which still allows up to 30 days for rights holders to respond. Instead, it expedited the appeals process, which happens after a rights holder rejects a disputed claim and arguably is the moment when the YouTuber’s account is most in danger of being terminated. “Now,…
Active (aka “powered”) speakers do not require a separate amplifier or receiver. Instead, they have amplification (which is what makes the sound loud enough to play through speakers) built in. These amps are often customized for their specific drivers and cabinetry, which can deliver performance benefits. Modern powered speakers also have other perks, like fully…
Skip sprays for kids. Children are more likely to squirm when they’re being sprayed, so the spray could inadvertently go toward their face and be inhaled. CR recommends that caregivers avoid using spray sunscreens on kids unless no other product is available. And if you have to use a spray, spray the product into your…
Although they are not all that common in the grand scheme of things and have decreased by 60 percent since 1980, vehicle fires are still a very real possibility. According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), 16 percent of fire deaths in 2022 (the most recent year for which data was available) were caused…
While safety is essential, our performance testing ensures that a generator will work as promised when you need it most. To do that, our expert engineers load up every model we assess with a variety of essentials you might want to power during an outage, like a space heater, refrigerator, or window air conditioner. (Check…