Rising Crust sunburn: the facts
Watching those frequent and reliably obnoxious ads for McCain's Crescendo "Rising Crust" Pizza left us, literally, with a burning question: Is it possible to get a "sunburn" from standing in front of an oven too long? The Toronto Star's science reporter Peter Calamai investigated.

The ads show office workers and high school students whose faces are disfigured by large rectangles of reddened skin. This is supposedly "oven burn" from gazing in anticipation through oven windows as the Crescendo pizza cooks.

Not possible, says Yaacov Ben-David, a professor of medical biophysics at the University of Toronto and Sunnybrook Health Science Centre.
"To redden people's skin colour, the heat would have to be of such intensity that they'd be covered in blisters," he says.

Ben-David points out that most people require multiple trips to tanning salons over days to acquire even a little artificial colour.
Thus, if your life is so devoid of activity you spend it staring at an oven while your pizza cooks, rest assured your face is safe. As usual while eating pizza, it's the roof of your mouth you have to beware.

http://www.thestar.com/