Potential Health Risks of Sunscreen - Studies of Melanoma Rates

Studies of Melanoma Rates

Malignant melanoma has been found more frequently in sunscreen users compared to non-users in some studies. Other studies found fair skinned people used more suncreen and had more skin cancer, but did not address cause and effect. A meta-analysis of 9067 patients from 11 case–control studies found no association between sunscreen use and development of malignant melanoma. It was suggested that sunscreens block the natural warnings and adaptations mediated by UVB, but allow damage from UVA to go unchecked.

However, these claims could not be supported in three meta-analyses. (Huncharek and Kupelnick, 2000, Annals Epidemiol. vol. 10, p. 467.)

The only evidence suggesting a relationship between sunscreen and melanoma is correlational, and thus cannot be used to establish a causal relationship.

Even though it is rare, malignant melanoma is responsible for 75% of all skin cancer-related death cases, making it the most lethal form of skin cancer. Many scientists argue that the sun-avoiding health message does increase some forms of skin cancer.

There is a correlation between high UV exposure, especially during childhood, and the risk to develop melanoma, resulting in a WHO recommendation for persons under 18 to avoid sunbeds.

Read more about this topic:  Potential Health Risks Of Sunscreen

Famous quotes containing the words studies of, studies and/or rates:

    His life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of the naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. The latter raises the moss and bark gently with his knife in search of insects; the former lays open logs to their core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and wide. He gets his living by barking trees. Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in him.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Possibly the Creator did not make the world chiefly for the purpose of providing studies for gifted novelists; but if he had done so, we can scarcely imagine that He could have offered anything much better in the way of material ...
    Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)

    [The] elderly and timid single gentleman in Paris ... never drove down the Champs Elysees without expecting an accident, and commonly witnessing one; or found himself in the neighborhood of an official without calculating the chances of a bomb. So long as the rates of progress held good, these bombs would double in force and number every ten years.
    Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)