Daily sunscreen application would slash melanoma rates

DAILY sunscreen use by all Australians would slash melanoma rates by up to a third by the year 2031, research has found.

DAILY sunscreen use by all Australians would slash melanoma rates by up to a third by the year 2031, research has found.

The study, led by QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute scientists, suggests more than 28,000 fewer melanomas would be diagnosed in Australia between now and 2031 if the population was vigilant about using sunscreen regularly over that time.

QIMR Berghofer’s cancer control group head David Whiteman said researchers estimated that in Australia, up to 90 per cent of the potentially deadly skin cancer was caused by sun exposure.

Queensland has the highest rates of melanoma in the world.

“Living in Queensland, just walking out to your car in the morning, driving to work, zipping out at lunch to do an errand, that amount of sun exposure that you get in one day, adds up to quite a lot of damage to your skin,” Professor Whiteman said. “When you do that for 365 days of the year, if you had sunscreen on your exposed skin, you would reduce your risk of melanoma.

“The daily use of sunscreen is to protect against those incidental, everyday exposures that most of us under-appreciate and which add up over time.”

Professor Whiteman said recent studies had found about 35 per cent of Australian women and 21 per cent of men were regular sunscreen users.

“If the whole population used sunscreen daily, then over the next 20 years, we would reduce melanoma incidence by about 34 per cent,” he said. “That’s the best case scenario. We’ll probably never get there. But if we increased the numbers of Australians using sunscreen daily by 5 per cent a year over the next 10 years, we would see melanoma rates falling by about 10 per cent by 2031 based on the modelling we’ve done. When you think of the pain and suffering that goes into each case of melanoma, you’re preventing a great deal of suffering.”

Professor Whiteman said ideally, people should reapply sunscreen every four hours. He said that in Queensland particularly, people should be vigilant about slopping on sunscreen all year round, even in winter.

“The ultraviolet levels in most of Queensland in the middle of the day are still pretty high in winter,” he said. “Data has shown that Queenslanders actually get as many sunburn episodes in winter as they do in summer. Queenslanders tend to be even more outdoorsy in the winter time.”

The research is published in the British Journal of Dermatology.