The increase may be linked to the increased use of sunscreen. Recent studies suggest that sunscreen use does not reduce melanoma rates and may actually raise them. Sunscreen does reduce less fatal types of skin cancer, but one hypothesis is that it gives people a false sense of security so they stay out in the sun longer. The warning signs of a sunburn don't happen, but the melanoma-causing damage may.

The cosmetics industry has invested a lot of money in the idea that sunscreen will keep you safe from skin cancer. At least in the case of melanoma, it does not appear to be true. We may be trading easily-cured types of skin cancer for potentially fatal ones.

I have several friends who use tanning beds religiously. It's like they think that skin cancer won't happen to them and that I'm overreacting when I do say something about tanning beds being bad for them.

My mom goes to the tanning bed at least once a week. Every time I mention how bad it is for her, she just laughs it off.

I am the pastiest person I know, and I don't tan, I burn. Just before my highschool grad, my boyfriend at the time suggested I start tanning or get a spray tan because I was so white, and I immediately told him where he could shove it.

I wear sunscreen everywhere I go (often mistaken for tanning lotion, frequently people ask "I smell tanning cream, were you tanning?" and I reply "does it look like I tan??"), but at least my moles and freckles will stay non-cancerous and won't have to be removed.

If you want the bronze look, just do the at home creams or something, don't risk your life for it! It's just one more thing in the cult of beauty...

Aren't people also having increasing problems with Vitamin D deficiencies due to near constant sunscreen use?

I thought that people didn't have to go to tanning bed anymore because fake tans have gotten so good? No?

I totally agree with mskehor. I too am very pasty (and i have redhair) and my friends all tell me i should get a tan. It's very hard for people to accept that there are some of us who just turn red like lobsters instead of brown or orange or whatever.

People usually see me dodging from shadey spot to shadey spot. I stay indoors a lot eventhough i really really like going to the beach. I actually like it when its cloudy but warm. Then i don't have to worry about applying sunscreen every hour. I use a special kind from the pharmacy that isn't supposed to cause any problems. It doesn't let anything through. At least its not supposed to. Seems to be working.

When I was 13 I was severly burned in the face by skiing without protection and ever since then i have been fanatical about protecting myself and I find it disgusting when i see other women run around partially naked and tanned because they don't realise how damaging the sun is.

ElleDee -- in my area tanning booths are recommended for therapeutic reasons by many physicians. We have a long winter period and at the peak of it the sun comes up 8am and goes down before 5. Some people get no sunlight because of their work schedule.

I have never used a tanning booth, but they seem especially popular among the old farmer types, mostly men, in this region (northern midwest). I have heard they help with arthritis.

I've had two moles removed even though I never sunbathe or use tanning beds, so I wonder what happens to the girls who actually do that. Oddgirl, did the studies say if the type of sunscreen mattered with preventing melanoma? Now they are making "broad spectrum" sunscreen because they realized that the old type wasn't protecting against one of the UV rays. I actually saw a PSA once telling girls not to use tanning beds and I had to commend them for finding actresses who were appropriately pasty.

Geobqn;

It has been suggested that barrier sunscreens may be more effective, but I do not think it has been studied. Barrier sunscreens would be like the old white nose block associated with lifeguards. They are not transparent (basically you are covering the skin with a layer of white paste), so of course there is not a very large population of people who use it across their body for a large period of time to serve as an experimental group!

Beyond that, no type of sunscreen has been linked with a reduction of melanoma rates. Of course, no one profits from telling you to get only the right amount of sun exposure for your skin (which is different for everyone) and location, and forget about sunscreens. On the other hand, there is a large industry encouraging parents to slather the stuff on their kids which may actually decrease the children's future resistance to sun exposure and make them more reliant on sunscreen just to be out in the sun for short periods of time.

As another poster pointed out, sunscreen use in kids was connected to increased risk of rickets due to low vitamin D levels in at least one study. If I remember right, it was more pronounced in higher income brackets where the kids never saw sunlight without the application of sunscreen and were more likely to drink unfortified natural milk.

The increase may be linked to the increased use of sunscreen. Recent studies suggest that sunscreen use does not reduce melanoma rates and may actually raise them.

Oddgirl, that's really misleading information. What seems to actually be happening is that most sunscreen has great UVB coverage, but many cosmetics companies don't include the ingredients necessary for UVA spectrum coverage, even if it says they do on the package. There are only two or three active ingredients that can protect you from UVA damage, and many times synthetics are used in their place which are simply not effective. UVB rays cause sunburn, wheareas UVA rays are the ones generally responsible for skin cancers, thus, you're partially right: when a sunscreen prevents sunburn but lacks the correct UVA protection, people spend hours and hours soaking up sun radiation.

People need to check the active ingredient list on their sunscreens, regardless of whether or not the label says that it has full spectrum protection.

CrankyCat:

"I actually like it when its cloudy but warm. Then i don't have to worry about applying sunscreen every hour."

Ultraviolet rays aren't necessarily blocked when it's cloudy. Some studies have found that they're reflected all over the place when they bounce off of clouds and therefore cloudy days are MORE dangerous.

kissmypineapple;

The link between UVA and melanoma has not been established. Fish exposed to both UVB and UVA radiation did form melanoma. However, it is entirely possible that there is another type of radiation acting with or instead of the UVA. Studies that stress the importance of UVA protection tend to be funded by the sunscreen industry under various names. Even nonprofits with official sounding anti-skin cancer names take huge amounts of money from the same industry.

I have no doubt that the next big thing will be a UVA marketing campaign, but the unbiased is just not there.

Even if your assumptions are completely correct, would my statement be less misleading if I said "the widespread use of most sunscreens"? Wordy and redundant, but okay.

It's so weird to hear people talking about prejudice based on the color of one's skin... I am the same shade as many of my tanning bed caucasian friends, but am considered "dark" because my nose is a little broader? Confusing.

If tanning yourself til you are brown is considered beautiful, and blacks have brown skin, that should mean that black is finally accepted as beautiful. So why is there still racism? 0_o

I don't get the whole tan=better thing. I'm a very, very light-skinned person naturally. I used to joke around about being see-through or glow-in-the-dark. However, since I no longer have a car and I walk or bike everywhere instead, I have a tan for pretty much the first time in my life and *I don't like it.* I miss my fair-skinned arms and I despise my tan lines. Odd thing though, everyone tells me that I look better now that I'm tan. :p I couldn't disagree with them more.

I will never understand the need to lay, bored, under shiny lights just to darken your skin a little. Eck.

Side note: I lived in Japan for three years so whenever I think of tanning beds the ganguro girls--or as my friends called them, "city pandas"--are always the first thing to come to my mind. Height of beauty? Hahahaha... No.

Personally, I'm naturally very, VERY pale, and I've found that having a little bit of a tan (and I mean a little bit -- I still look like an Irish ghost, but you should see my tanlines, I'm translucent) prevents me from burning. I think it's silly when people try to say that tanning's GOOD for you, though--it isn't. But if you live long enough you're bound to get some sort of cancer. I'd rather live in the sun, and smoke, and eat junk food, etc. than die at an old age without really having lived.

Sacrificing health for beauty is nothing new. How about the millions of girls who will probably be plagued with osteoporosis in forty years (if they live that long) because they deprived themselves of proper nourishment when they were younger? How about all the people smoking to keep their weight down?

I just really think that people overreact to tanning. In my state, you have to have parental permission to tan if you're under 18. That's right, you're capable of operating a vehicle on public roads unaccompanied at 16, but you can't make the decision to use a sunbed! It's ridiculous.

Well, Humans are made to go out in the sun... but not to have light attacking their skin for hours on end, in tanning beds. Me? I don't even have the patience to put on lip gloss most of the time, let alone sit around waiting for my skin to change colors. I think pale skin is actually very pretty, anyway.

I do go out in the sun, but usually only in the evenings (I really, really hate the heat). I never use sunscreen. It's kind of a choose-your-poison deal, there. In taking genetics I learned that ingredients in sunscreen are listed as carcinogens. As long as I'm careful not to be out so long that I burn, I avoid sunscreen.

That's just me.

Just for a laugh: this Scary-Go-Round strip.

"Soon I shall be one giant mole, while Amy becomes an attractive hue of buttered toast. It is most unfair."

"It's so weird to hear people talking about prejudice based on the color of one's skin... I am the same shade as many of my tanning bed caucasian friends, but am considered "dark" because my nose is a little broader? Confusing."

cinnimon_girl, I agree with your point completely. It's one of the weirdest paradoxes I see on a daily basis... well maybe not the weirdest, but pretty damn weird. People are supposed to go out and bake themselves to darken their skin way beyond anything natural and healthy, but women with beautiful, naturally dark skin are supposed to be lighter. Whyyyy?

I'm pretty white, but not super-pale. I like the colour I am because it goes well with my eyes. I'm lucky to have gotten a liiittle bit of olive in my skin so I don't burn instantly, not like my dad, the always-red lobsterman. Health is what I think is important here. What you're born with is healthy for you, and so beautiful as it is. We're told to accept our weight, so why not our skin?

Lindsay commented at July 15, 2008 8:34 PM: "People are supposed to go out and bake themselves to darken their skin way beyond anything natural and healthy, but women with beautiful, naturally dark skin are supposed to be lighter. Whyyyy?"

From "Time To Lighten Up," Jaal, 01/05/2004, http://www.jaalmag.com/01052004/smearscape.htm :

"...What a strange world we live in. We have whites making fun of other whites for being too white, and we also have blacks snubbing other blacks for being too black. Who knows, perhaps within our arteries and veins we have exclusive clubs of red blood cells that travel around together, saying, 'We're not as red as they are!'..."

My late grandmother was born in 1900, lived to be nearly 94, and never looked anywhere near her age b/c she avoided the sun. (Like Louise, we are Irish-pale in our family.) She maintained that when she was growing up, pale skin was the sign of wealth and privilege: "ladies" used hats and gloves and parasols to protect their complexions. If you were tan, it meant you had to work outside: you were considered "common." Then came the Roaring Twenties, and people suddenly had disposable income, and could take off for vacations to the tropics or the south of France, so that tan became the new sign of status and leisure.
"You watch," she'd say,"sooner or later, it will swing back the other way, because too much sun is just not good for you."
Smart lady.