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> At 36, I am just old enough to remember when sunscreen wasn’t a big deal. My mom, despite being among the palest people alive, does not remember bringing it o

> At 36, I am just old enough to remember when sunscreen wasn’t a big deal. My mom, despite being among the palest people alive, does not remember bringing it on our earliest vacations, or hearing any mention of sun protection by our pediatrician. > Now SPF is ubiquitous. You can find it in lotions, sprays, gels, oils, powders, and implements that look like grade-school glue sticks, as well as infused into skin-care products, lip balms, makeup, and clothing. Sun care has its own aisle at big-box stores, and beauty companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been built from the ground up by offering only products that block ultraviolet rays. So we went from little to no sunscreen to ubiquity over a few decades, but over that time rates of skin cancer have increased per 100k. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK247164/figure/skincancer.f3/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK247164/figure/skincanc... Shouldn't rates have gone down? What explains this?

moralestapia 4y ago
I recall reading a recent study (too lazy to look it up, tbh) that showed a link between skin cancer and sunscreen use, so your numbers may somehow support that suspicion.
- NavinF 4y ago
  That link proves that cancer causes sunscreen. See https://xkcd.com/925/ https://xkcd.com/925/
tdeck 4y ago
Perhaps because so many sunscreens contain benzene, a known carcinogen: https://www.valisure.com/valisure-newsroom/valisure-detects-benzene-in-sunscreen https://www.valisure.com/valisure-newsroom/valisure-detects-...
- _justinfunk 4y ago
  Why is this being downvoted so heavily? Is this a known conspiracy theory? Does anyone have evidence to the contrary? Or a secondary source for the allegation?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - icelancer 4y ago
    Valisure is being investigated by the FDA for the benzene thing, but their history is pretty reliable and dovetails with FDA findings. It's not clear why the FDA is going after Valisure for this particular independent test. However, there is also a huge sunscreen "truther" movement that's been going on since the late 90's, bolstered by publications like Mother Jones. Google "sunscreen conspiracy" and you'll find tons of alternative medicine (aka nonsense) sites about it. My guess is that the downvotes are coming from those who have heard of the latter and conflate it for the former. My personal opinion is that Valisure is on the up and up, but who knows.
  - derbOac 4y ago
    Another perspective from Consumer Reports: https://www.consumerreports.org/toxic-chemicals-substances/benzene-known-carcinogen-in-spray-sunscreens-deodorants-a1136768493/ https://www.consumerreports.org/toxic-chemicals-substances/b... They didn't find it in their testing, but noted recalls.
  - tdeck 4y ago
    I'm also confused. This was a big news story a while back; it led to dozens of product recalls. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/15/johnson-johnson-sunscreen-recall-benzene/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/15/johnson-joh... https://www.npr.org/2021/10/01/1042507194/coppertone-recalls-sunscreen-benzene https://www.npr.org/2021/10/01/1042507194/coppertone-recalls... https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/17/health/sunscreen-recall-cancer-wellness/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/17/health/sunscreen-recall-cance... Perhaps because my comment was so brief and had only one reference it lacked credibility.
Vanit 4y ago
People's willingness to engage in risky behaviour tends to increase with how safe they think they are. So basically they're staying out in the sun for longer, but either not using or reapplying enough sunscreen.
pcmoney 4y ago
I don’t have them on hand but I believe some studies claimed that diet can have a negative affect on skin cancer resistance.
jorblumesea 4y ago
The cause is probably a mix of things. Tanning and clothing style/choice are both significant cultural changes. Active lifestyles are more in trend. People are also living longer, and increasing the window that you might have cancer. There's some interesting psychological changes too. If you have sunscreen on, you might stay in the sun longer because you are "protected" but most sunscreens you need to reapply. Water also washes them off easily. My grandparents always said they were on the beach under an umbrella. This is no longer common.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  Yeah I can look at my aunts and uncles who all grew up farming and tell which ones wore long sleeves and hats in the fields. My mother now looks older than her older brother despite having a better diet.
- blooalien 4y ago
  > "The cause is probably a mix of things." Thank you! So few people seem to understand that about things these days. Always looking for "the simple explanation" or "the one true answer" to any issue. It's rarely that simple in reality however. It's quite often "a mix of things" all contributing to the final effect being observed.
medymed 4y ago
One explanation is a time delay. Most typical skin cancers (BCCs and SCCs), like other features of sun damaged skin, tend to arise decades after high levels of chronic or accumulated intermittent sun exposure at a younger age. (However that be less true for melanoma.)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
  I had two BCC’s at a very young age (26/27). They were almost certainly caused by frequent (1-2x a week) usage of tanning beds for several years in my early 20’s. I stopped using the beds around 24 and besides the two BCC’s at 26 and 27 have not had any issues for a decade. And I know the word “cancer” sounds bad, but it’s very relative. BCC/SCC are very very unlikely to kill you, think of them as an extremely slow growing pimple. They could possibly kill you if you let them grow unchecked for several decades. Melanoma, on the other hand, is a entirely different beast that will kill you quickly if you don’t catch it early.
  - hgomersall 4y ago
    BCCs are correlated with longer life expectancy.
    - andrekandre 4y ago
      just a note im case no someome hasnt seen those abbreviations before: bcc → basal cell carcinoma scc → squamous cell carcinoma
huac 4y ago
- WillPostForFood 4y ago
  No evidence of this, and no reasonable scientific hypothesis to make you think this would be true. There is nothing emitted from LED bulbs with enough energy to damage DNA. Secondary effects around sleep disruption, possibly, but not skin cancer.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  The sun gives you orders of magnitude more blue light than your dinky artificial lights.
akersten 4y ago
Better detection and screening for these cancers resulting in an apparently larger rate of incidence is an easy hypothesis to reach for.
- hinkley 4y ago
  Also cancer is often in line behind other things waiting to kill you. If you survive everything else, you die of cancer.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    Melanoma is a type of cancer that often kills young people, like breast cancer.
- culi 4y ago
  What specific advances have been made in better detection and/or screening? Do we use better technology for this? If there was some sudden advancement then I'd assume we'd see a sudden jump in the graph. Rather, we see an incredibly smooth and steady increase. Furthermore, the graph is split between male and female and there's very few, if any, little increases that are synchronized across these categories. If technology was a factor I'd assume we'd see increases in both
  - bryans 4y ago
    > What specific advances have been made in better detection and/or screening? Do we use better technology for this? The technology[1] and methodology used in detection has advanced significantly and repeatedly. > If there was some sudden advancement then I'd assume we'd see a sudden jump in the graph. Rather, we see an incredibly smooth and steady increase. You're ignoring the time it takes for technology to be adopted and implemented. No business, medical or otherwise, blindly purchases every piece of technology the moment it's made available on the market. In medicine, that process can actually be so slow that by the time a specific product reaches mass adoption, the current technology or methodology or medical understanding has already progressed, starting a new cycle of adoption. And that's all still ignoring the financial costs, which are often a barrier for smaller practices. > Furthermore, the graph is split between male and female and there's very few, if any, little increases that are synchronized across these categories. If technology was a factor I'd assume we'd see increases in both You're ignoring many factors here, most notably that women visit the doctor more often[2], spend more time per visit and more willingly express concerns[3], and increasingly so as care for women has become more accessible and less stigmatized[4]. Also, the graph is actually extremely synchronized between men and women, so I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5624041/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5624041/ [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15130263/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15130263/ [3] https://newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2019/09/04/cleveland-clinic-survey-men-will-do-almost-anything-to-avoid-going-to-the-doctor/ https://newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2019/09/04/cleveland-cl... [4] https://swhr.org/about/history/timeline/ https://swhr.org/about/history/timeline/
happyopossum 4y ago
All those people tanning in the 90s aren’t going to get skin cancer right away - it takes a few decades to catch up.
- dghughes 4y ago
  The Canadian Cancer Society has a UV camera in a box. People stick their head in and it shows the hundred of freckles, blotches, sunspots under your skin you can't see now but will later. Then they ask you to put on sunscreen and where it is on your skin is opaque jet black.
  - undoware 4y ago
    impressive public-health comms technique, but again, will still 'show jet black' even if: - you're wearing a sunscreen which is itself carcinogenic, and are being affected by this - your sunscreen is destroying coral reefs - your sunscreen washes off easily - your suncreen is unpleasant to wear (making you unlikely to wear it) - your body actually needed some sunlight anyway: https://www.outsideonline.com/health/wellness/sunscreen-sun-exposure-skin-cancer-science/ https://www.outsideonline.com/health/wellness/sunscreen-sun-... This is why public-health comms, a thing I have previously done in this tapas of careers, is very difficult to do in a way that does not itself cause some harm. In this case, the visceral visualization of the effects of UV light overlooks the possibility (EDIT: leads the participant to overlook the possibility) that we were simply wrong about the 1:1 correlation between UV exposure and cancer. Science is always changing, and deep-seated emotional reactions tend not to. One oft-overlooked goal of public health comms is to try not to generate so many of the latter that people can no longer accept the former.
    - scotty79 4y ago
      'show jet black' is not the strategy of researching whole impact of sunscreen. However once the impact of sunscreen is researched and it comes out positive you still need to convince people that applying sunscreen is a good idea. Just telling the information doesn't work that well. Demonstration like the one mentioned is better.
ltbarcly3 4y ago
At 42 I remember the pre-sunscreen days as well. At the beginning of summer we would all go to the pool and get a nasty burn. Within a week we were at the pool all day every day and would not have a burn again until the next year. On average we would be getting around 3 painful but not serious burns per year (one at the start of summer, one when we went to the amusement park, one when we went out on a boat or something) despite hundreds and hundreds of hours of direct sun exposure each summer. These days I rarely spend much time outside in the sun, and when I do I almost always burn. I am not in the sun enough to maintain a tan. When I go on vacation I can build up to about 4 or 5 hours of full sun exposure without burning in about 2 weeks (if I get outside a few weeks before to kickstart things), just in time to come home and lose my tan completely. As a result, I get sunburns more often now than I did as an 8 year old when I spent more than 40x more hours in the sun every year (roughly 4+ hours per day for 100 days of summer weather, vs today where it's maybe 20 minutes every few days). I guess my hypothesis is: much less cumulative exposure can result in more damage to DNA if it is punctuated by periods of intense exposure when compared to consistent intense exposure.
- wirthjason 4y ago
  42 as well. Once you got a “base” it wasn’t really an issue. And I’d be out all day riding bikes and playing 8 hours a day. Everyone had a farmers tan. That said, I now use sun screen like crazy but it’s mainly about vanity as I confront aging. I also make sure my daughter is protected with sun screen, it’s like being bilingual, she’ll thank me later.
- dghughes 4y ago
  53 here. My Mom said when I was a baby in the stroller she'd pull back the blanket a little at a time so my legs could get some sun. I have blue eyes, was very blond as a kid, but not super pale. During the summer we went to the beach quite often. I don't recall ever having a sunburn. I'm sure I had sunscreen on at some point but it probably washed off with the salt water. I think my geekiness of being inside from early teens onward counteracted any extreme sun exposure I may have experienced as a child. And I'm male so I didn't sunbathe like girls did at the time with baby oil to increase the sun damage to tan faster.
- 4y ago
icegreentea2 4y ago
Reasonable question. There appears to be a shift in the relative incidence rates based on age since 2000 (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/fullarticle/2754716 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/fullarticle...). Skin cancer rates were always weighted towards older (average age at detection is ~65), but at the same time skin cancers are one of the more common cancers found in young people. Since 2000 where appears to be a decrease in incidence of younger ages, and an increase of those at older ages. EDIT: Just to add on, I don't know if this age shift effect accounts for everything, but I think it's interesting and relevant.
- jandrese 4y ago
  Are you suggesting that the skin cancer rates are a lagging indicator and the explosion in cases is the result of the lax attitudes of a few decades ago as described in the article? One thing the article didn't mention is that even just 30 years ago sunscreens were nowhere near as effective as they are today. SPF 15 was extremely common and 30 was kinda rare and usually left you looking like you were whitewashed. Today it's nothing at all to find SPF 50 on the shelf. And if you use them properly they actually work, unlike some of the formulations of old. You can be out in the direct sun all afternoon and still come in still mostly pale.
  - masklinn 4y ago
    > Are you suggesting that the skin cancer rates are a lagging indicator and the explosion in cases is the result of the lax attitudes of a few decades ago as described in the article? That seems logical, skin cancer is not a next-day result of overexposure, sunburn is.
cortesoft 4y ago
Cancer rates are a lagging indicator. You get sunburned today, you get cancer in 30 years. The people getting skin cancer now were not wearing sunscreen in 1990.
- _justinfunk 4y ago
  And we all remember how the sun was invented in 1991.
  - cortesoft 4y ago
    The whole in the ozone was a big deal in the 80s.
    - adastra22 4y ago
      In Argentina.
      - culi 4y ago
        Actually Australia had it the worst. I remember estimates that the MAJORITY of Australians will have had skin cancer in their lifetimes
        dhzhzjsbevs 4y ago
        Excuse you. NZ and Pacific islands had it the worst. Aussie sun is a joke compared to NZ sun.
        robocat 4y ago
        The ozone hole is scary, and certainly anecdotally it feels like it severely affected UV levels, however apparently the science says the hole didn’t actually affect UV in NZ very much: “While the ozone hole does not directly affect ozone concentrations over New Zealand, when it breaks up in spring it can send ‘plumes’ of ozone-depleted air towards us. This briefly decreases column ozone levels by around 5 percent, about the same amount as normal daily variation (Ajtić et al, 2004).”[1]. I read that a 5% decrease in column ozone leads to a 2.5% increase in UV, which is not that significant. Personally I believe the NZ sun is harsh, but looking at country measurements shows UV levels in NZ are not as bad as we might think. That said, as a NZer, I am extremely pleased that everyone banned ozone depleting chemicals. [1] https://www.stats.govt.nz/indicators/ozone-hole/ https://www.stats.govt.nz/indicators/ozone-hole/
moneywoes 4y ago
Could there be a lurking variable here?
formerkrogemp 4y ago
I blame tanning beds in part. My cousin and I are the same age, but they used tanning beds quite heavily whereas I have not. They look significantly older than I do now and they're more at risk for skin cancer as we have genetic factors at play.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> So we went from little to no sunscreen to ubiquity over a few decades, but over that time rates of skin cancer have increased per 100k UV exposure patterns have changed significantly. Long-distance vacation travel to sunny locations is much more common now. Tanning beds are much more common. Both holidays and deliberate tanning often take people from indoor office life to the opposite extreme of sun exposure. People also dress differently in the sun than they did in the past. Even in my old family photos, it's interesting to see people relatively more covered up in the sun (long pants, long sleeves, big hats) in older photos relative to our modern shorts and t-shirt style today. Some of this can be seen in statistics where melanoma rates on the torso are increasing much faster than average. It's also theorized that people who wear sunscreen become more cavalier about sun exposure in general. Sunscreen doesn't provide perfect protection and it needs to be reapplied over time. A lot of people put some sunscreen on and then assume they're good for the rest of the day, or they wash a lot of it off in the pool, or they miss spots, and so on.
- melissalobos 4y ago
  > People also dress differently in the sun than they did in the past. Temperatures in those sunny areas have increased as well on average over the last few decades.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    I don't think that contradicts the GP? They were giving possible explanations as to why skin cancer rates may have increased despite the widespread availability of sunscreen.
    - melissalobos 4y ago
      Sure and I was positing why they may have increased.
  - Zhenya 4y ago
    By enough to make people change their dress significantly? Could you provide some proof of such temperature changes?
MattGaiser 4y ago
Lots of confounding factors, from skimpier swimwear to Caribbean vacations to potentially better detection.
ekianjo 4y ago
Theres not just one kind of skin cancer. For this kind of things it matters to make a distinction between the benign ones and deadly ones.
spaetzleesser 4y ago
"Shouldn't rates have gone down? What explains this?" I think with a lot of diseases it's better diagnosis so you get more cases. I feel the same is true for autism. When I grew up nobody knew about autism so the autism rate was basically zero. We just had weird people.
macondo 4y ago
It's the cheap vegetable oils. Up to the 80s even McDonalds would use beef fat for their fries. Now? Let's call it just a correlation between that and cancer. I know it's causal but we'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
jaclaz 4y ago
JFYI (to have a glimpse/anecdote on the past): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28865164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28865164
BirAdam 4y ago
Umm, others already mentioned behavior changes involving more vacation and more tanning, but people also changed their diets. Most diets focus on high carb and low fat, which is unfortunate for cancer. Cancer feeds on sugars and many simpler carbs break down to glucose. Additionally, many processed foods contain quite high levels of sugar. When humans were eating less sugar, cancer cells grew more slowly. As others mentioned, cancer tends to be the thing that kills you most slowly, but it still could be delayed a bit. It’s worth mentioning that some doctors I’ve met have started advocating low-meat keto for their cancer patients, so while I am completely an amateur with health topics, I feel I am on somewhat firm footing here.

moralestapia 4y ago

I recall reading a recent study (too lazy to look it up, tbh) that showed a link between skin cancer and sunscreen use, so your numbers may somehow support that suspicion.

NavinF 4y ago
That link proves that cancer causes sunscreen. See https://xkcd.com/925/ https://xkcd.com/925/

tdeck 4y ago

Perhaps because so many sunscreens contain benzene, a known carcinogen: https://www.valisure.com/valisure-newsroom/valisure-detects-benzene-in-sunscreen https://www.valisure.com/valisure-newsroom/valisure-detects-...

_justinfunk 4y ago
Why is this being downvoted so heavily? Is this a known conspiracy theory? Does anyone have evidence to the contrary? Or a secondary source for the allegation?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- icelancer 4y ago
  Valisure is being investigated by the FDA for the benzene thing, but their history is pretty reliable and dovetails with FDA findings. It's not clear why the FDA is going after Valisure for this particular independent test. However, there is also a huge sunscreen "truther" movement that's been going on since the late 90's, bolstered by publications like Mother Jones. Google "sunscreen conspiracy" and you'll find tons of alternative medicine (aka nonsense) sites about it. My guess is that the downvotes are coming from those who have heard of the latter and conflate it for the former. My personal opinion is that Valisure is on the up and up, but who knows.
- derbOac 4y ago
  Another perspective from Consumer Reports: https://www.consumerreports.org/toxic-chemicals-substances/benzene-known-carcinogen-in-spray-sunscreens-deodorants-a1136768493/ https://www.consumerreports.org/toxic-chemicals-substances/b... They didn't find it in their testing, but noted recalls.
- tdeck 4y ago
  I'm also confused. This was a big news story a while back; it led to dozens of product recalls. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/15/johnson-johnson-sunscreen-recall-benzene/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/15/johnson-joh... https://www.npr.org/2021/10/01/1042507194/coppertone-recalls-sunscreen-benzene https://www.npr.org/2021/10/01/1042507194/coppertone-recalls... https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/17/health/sunscreen-recall-cancer-wellness/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/17/health/sunscreen-recall-cance... Perhaps because my comment was so brief and had only one reference it lacked credibility.

Vanit 4y ago

People's willingness to engage in risky behaviour tends to increase with how safe they think they are. So basically they're staying out in the sun for longer, but either not using or reapplying enough sunscreen.

pcmoney 4y ago

I don’t have them on hand but I believe some studies claimed that diet can have a negative affect on skin cancer resistance.

jorblumesea 4y ago

The cause is probably a mix of things. Tanning and clothing style/choice are both significant cultural changes. Active lifestyles are more in trend. People are also living longer, and increasing the window that you might have cancer. There's some interesting psychological changes too. If you have sunscreen on, you might stay in the sun longer because you are "protected" but most sunscreens you need to reapply. Water also washes them off easily. My grandparents always said they were on the beach under an umbrella. This is no longer common.

ch4s3 4y ago
Yeah I can look at my aunts and uncles who all grew up farming and tell which ones wore long sleeves and hats in the fields. My mother now looks older than her older brother despite having a better diet.
blooalien 4y ago
> "The cause is probably a mix of things." Thank you! So few people seem to understand that about things these days. Always looking for "the simple explanation" or "the one true answer" to any issue. It's rarely that simple in reality however. It's quite often "a mix of things" all contributing to the final effect being observed.

medymed 4y ago

One explanation is a time delay. Most typical skin cancers (BCCs and SCCs), like other features of sun damaged skin, tend to arise decades after high levels of chronic or accumulated intermittent sun exposure at a younger age. (However that be less true for melanoma.)

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
I had two BCC’s at a very young age (26/27). They were almost certainly caused by frequent (1-2x a week) usage of tanning beds for several years in my early 20’s. I stopped using the beds around 24 and besides the two BCC’s at 26 and 27 have not had any issues for a decade. And I know the word “cancer” sounds bad, but it’s very relative. BCC/SCC are very very unlikely to kill you, think of them as an extremely slow growing pimple. They could possibly kill you if you let them grow unchecked for several decades. Melanoma, on the other hand, is a entirely different beast that will kill you quickly if you don’t catch it early.
- hgomersall 4y ago
  BCCs are correlated with longer life expectancy.
  - andrekandre 4y ago
    just a note im case no someome hasnt seen those abbreviations before: bcc → basal cell carcinoma scc → squamous cell carcinoma

huac 4y ago

WillPostForFood 4y ago
No evidence of this, and no reasonable scientific hypothesis to make you think this would be true. There is nothing emitted from LED bulbs with enough energy to damage DNA. Secondary effects around sleep disruption, possibly, but not skin cancer.
lern_too_spel 4y ago
The sun gives you orders of magnitude more blue light than your dinky artificial lights.

akersten 4y ago

Better detection and screening for these cancers resulting in an apparently larger rate of incidence is an easy hypothesis to reach for.

hinkley 4y ago
Also cancer is often in line behind other things waiting to kill you. If you survive everything else, you die of cancer.
- adrianN 4y ago
  Melanoma is a type of cancer that often kills young people, like breast cancer.
culi 4y ago
What specific advances have been made in better detection and/or screening? Do we use better technology for this? If there was some sudden advancement then I'd assume we'd see a sudden jump in the graph. Rather, we see an incredibly smooth and steady increase. Furthermore, the graph is split between male and female and there's very few, if any, little increases that are synchronized across these categories. If technology was a factor I'd assume we'd see increases in both
- bryans 4y ago
  > What specific advances have been made in better detection and/or screening? Do we use better technology for this? The technology[1] and methodology used in detection has advanced significantly and repeatedly. > If there was some sudden advancement then I'd assume we'd see a sudden jump in the graph. Rather, we see an incredibly smooth and steady increase. You're ignoring the time it takes for technology to be adopted and implemented. No business, medical or otherwise, blindly purchases every piece of technology the moment it's made available on the market. In medicine, that process can actually be so slow that by the time a specific product reaches mass adoption, the current technology or methodology or medical understanding has already progressed, starting a new cycle of adoption. And that's all still ignoring the financial costs, which are often a barrier for smaller practices. > Furthermore, the graph is split between male and female and there's very few, if any, little increases that are synchronized across these categories. If technology was a factor I'd assume we'd see increases in both You're ignoring many factors here, most notably that women visit the doctor more often[2], spend more time per visit and more willingly express concerns[3], and increasingly so as care for women has become more accessible and less stigmatized[4]. Also, the graph is actually extremely synchronized between men and women, so I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5624041/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5624041/ [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15130263/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15130263/ [3] https://newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2019/09/04/cleveland-clinic-survey-men-will-do-almost-anything-to-avoid-going-to-the-doctor/ https://newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2019/09/04/cleveland-cl... [4] https://swhr.org/about/history/timeline/ https://swhr.org/about/history/timeline/

happyopossum 4y ago

All those people tanning in the 90s aren’t going to get skin cancer right away - it takes a few decades to catch up.

dghughes 4y ago
The Canadian Cancer Society has a UV camera in a box. People stick their head in and it shows the hundred of freckles, blotches, sunspots under your skin you can't see now but will later. Then they ask you to put on sunscreen and where it is on your skin is opaque jet black.
- undoware 4y ago
  impressive public-health comms technique, but again, will still 'show jet black' even if: - you're wearing a sunscreen which is itself carcinogenic, and are being affected by this - your sunscreen is destroying coral reefs - your sunscreen washes off easily - your suncreen is unpleasant to wear (making you unlikely to wear it) - your body actually needed some sunlight anyway: https://www.outsideonline.com/health/wellness/sunscreen-sun-exposure-skin-cancer-science/ https://www.outsideonline.com/health/wellness/sunscreen-sun-... This is why public-health comms, a thing I have previously done in this tapas of careers, is very difficult to do in a way that does not itself cause some harm. In this case, the visceral visualization of the effects of UV light overlooks the possibility (EDIT: leads the participant to overlook the possibility) that we were simply wrong about the 1:1 correlation between UV exposure and cancer. Science is always changing, and deep-seated emotional reactions tend not to. One oft-overlooked goal of public health comms is to try not to generate so many of the latter that people can no longer accept the former.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    'show jet black' is not the strategy of researching whole impact of sunscreen. However once the impact of sunscreen is researched and it comes out positive you still need to convince people that applying sunscreen is a good idea. Just telling the information doesn't work that well. Demonstration like the one mentioned is better.

ltbarcly3 4y ago

At 42 I remember the pre-sunscreen days as well. At the beginning of summer we would all go to the pool and get a nasty burn. Within a week we were at the pool all day every day and would not have a burn again until the next year. On average we would be getting around 3 painful but not serious burns per year (one at the start of summer, one when we went to the amusement park, one when we went out on a boat or something) despite hundreds and hundreds of hours of direct sun exposure each summer. These days I rarely spend much time outside in the sun, and when I do I almost always burn. I am not in the sun enough to maintain a tan. When I go on vacation I can build up to about 4 or 5 hours of full sun exposure without burning in about 2 weeks (if I get outside a few weeks before to kickstart things), just in time to come home and lose my tan completely. As a result, I get sunburns more often now than I did as an 8 year old when I spent more than 40x more hours in the sun every year (roughly 4+ hours per day for 100 days of summer weather, vs today where it's maybe 20 minutes every few days). I guess my hypothesis is: much less cumulative exposure can result in more damage to DNA if it is punctuated by periods of intense exposure when compared to consistent intense exposure.

wirthjason 4y ago
42 as well. Once you got a “base” it wasn’t really an issue. And I’d be out all day riding bikes and playing 8 hours a day. Everyone had a farmers tan. That said, I now use sun screen like crazy but it’s mainly about vanity as I confront aging. I also make sure my daughter is protected with sun screen, it’s like being bilingual, she’ll thank me later.
dghughes 4y ago
53 here. My Mom said when I was a baby in the stroller she'd pull back the blanket a little at a time so my legs could get some sun. I have blue eyes, was very blond as a kid, but not super pale. During the summer we went to the beach quite often. I don't recall ever having a sunburn. I'm sure I had sunscreen on at some point but it probably washed off with the salt water. I think my geekiness of being inside from early teens onward counteracted any extreme sun exposure I may have experienced as a child. And I'm male so I didn't sunbathe like girls did at the time with baby oil to increase the sun damage to tan faster.
4y ago

icegreentea2 4y ago

Reasonable question. There appears to be a shift in the relative incidence rates based on age since 2000 (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/fullarticle/2754716 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/fullarticle...). Skin cancer rates were always weighted towards older (average age at detection is ~65), but at the same time skin cancers are one of the more common cancers found in young people. Since 2000 where appears to be a decrease in incidence of younger ages, and an increase of those at older ages. EDIT: Just to add on, I don't know if this age shift effect accounts for everything, but I think it's interesting and relevant.

jandrese 4y ago
Are you suggesting that the skin cancer rates are a lagging indicator and the explosion in cases is the result of the lax attitudes of a few decades ago as described in the article? One thing the article didn't mention is that even just 30 years ago sunscreens were nowhere near as effective as they are today. SPF 15 was extremely common and 30 was kinda rare and usually left you looking like you were whitewashed. Today it's nothing at all to find SPF 50 on the shelf. And if you use them properly they actually work, unlike some of the formulations of old. You can be out in the direct sun all afternoon and still come in still mostly pale.
- masklinn 4y ago
  > Are you suggesting that the skin cancer rates are a lagging indicator and the explosion in cases is the result of the lax attitudes of a few decades ago as described in the article? That seems logical, skin cancer is not a next-day result of overexposure, sunburn is.

cortesoft 4y ago

Cancer rates are a lagging indicator. You get sunburned today, you get cancer in 30 years. The people getting skin cancer now were not wearing sunscreen in 1990.

_justinfunk 4y ago
And we all remember how the sun was invented in 1991.
- cortesoft 4y ago
  The whole in the ozone was a big deal in the 80s.
  - adastra22 4y ago
    In Argentina.
    - culi 4y ago
      Actually Australia had it the worst. I remember estimates that the MAJORITY of Australians will have had skin cancer in their lifetimes
      - dhzhzjsbevs 4y ago
        Excuse you. NZ and Pacific islands had it the worst. Aussie sun is a joke compared to NZ sun.
        robocat 4y ago
        The ozone hole is scary, and certainly anecdotally it feels like it severely affected UV levels, however apparently the science says the hole didn’t actually affect UV in NZ very much: “While the ozone hole does not directly affect ozone concentrations over New Zealand, when it breaks up in spring it can send ‘plumes’ of ozone-depleted air towards us. This briefly decreases column ozone levels by around 5 percent, about the same amount as normal daily variation (Ajtić et al, 2004).”[1]. I read that a 5% decrease in column ozone leads to a 2.5% increase in UV, which is not that significant. Personally I believe the NZ sun is harsh, but looking at country measurements shows UV levels in NZ are not as bad as we might think. That said, as a NZer, I am extremely pleased that everyone banned ozone depleting chemicals. [1] https://www.stats.govt.nz/indicators/ozone-hole/ https://www.stats.govt.nz/indicators/ozone-hole/

moneywoes 4y ago

Could there be a lurking variable here?

formerkrogemp 4y ago

I blame tanning beds in part. My cousin and I are the same age, but they used tanning beds quite heavily whereas I have not. They look significantly older than I do now and they're more at risk for skin cancer as we have genetic factors at play.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> So we went from little to no sunscreen to ubiquity over a few decades, but over that time rates of skin cancer have increased per 100k UV exposure patterns have changed significantly. Long-distance vacation travel to sunny locations is much more common now. Tanning beds are much more common. Both holidays and deliberate tanning often take people from indoor office life to the opposite extreme of sun exposure. People also dress differently in the sun than they did in the past. Even in my old family photos, it's interesting to see people relatively more covered up in the sun (long pants, long sleeves, big hats) in older photos relative to our modern shorts and t-shirt style today. Some of this can be seen in statistics where melanoma rates on the torso are increasing much faster than average. It's also theorized that people who wear sunscreen become more cavalier about sun exposure in general. Sunscreen doesn't provide perfect protection and it needs to be reapplied over time. A lot of people put some sunscreen on and then assume they're good for the rest of the day, or they wash a lot of it off in the pool, or they miss spots, and so on.

melissalobos 4y ago
> People also dress differently in the sun than they did in the past. Temperatures in those sunny areas have increased as well on average over the last few decades.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  I don't think that contradicts the GP? They were giving possible explanations as to why skin cancer rates may have increased despite the widespread availability of sunscreen.
  - melissalobos 4y ago
    Sure and I was positing why they may have increased.
- Zhenya 4y ago
  By enough to make people change their dress significantly? Could you provide some proof of such temperature changes?

MattGaiser 4y ago

Lots of confounding factors, from skimpier swimwear to Caribbean vacations to potentially better detection.

ekianjo 4y ago

Theres not just one kind of skin cancer. For this kind of things it matters to make a distinction between the benign ones and deadly ones.

spaetzleesser 4y ago

"Shouldn't rates have gone down? What explains this?" I think with a lot of diseases it's better diagnosis so you get more cases. I feel the same is true for autism. When I grew up nobody knew about autism so the autism rate was basically zero. We just had weird people.

macondo 4y ago

It's the cheap vegetable oils. Up to the 80s even McDonalds would use beef fat for their fries. Now? Let's call it just a correlation between that and cancer. I know it's causal but we'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

jaclaz 4y ago

JFYI (to have a glimpse/anecdote on the past): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28865164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28865164

BirAdam 4y ago

Umm, others already mentioned behavior changes involving more vacation and more tanning, but people also changed their diets. Most diets focus on high carb and low fat, which is unfortunate for cancer. Cancer feeds on sugars and many simpler carbs break down to glucose. Additionally, many processed foods contain quite high levels of sugar. When humans were eating less sugar, cancer cells grew more slowly. As others mentioned, cancer tends to be the thing that kills you most slowly, but it still could be delayed a bit. It’s worth mentioning that some doctors I’ve met have started advocating low-meat keto for their cancer patients, so while I am completely an amateur with health topics, I feel I am on somewhat firm footing here.