SKIN cancer rates are likely to continue increasing over the next 30 years, despite messages about safety in the sun.
This comes from an article in the latest issue of The Journal of The Royal Society for the Promotion of Health, written by Rebecca Penzer, a researcher at Southampton University.
The increase will affect both malignant and non-malignant cancers and the key factor is the long period between over exposure to the sun and the actual development of skin cancer.
This means that health promotion work aimed at changing sun exposure behaviour takes a long time to have much effect.
People developing skin cancers in the near future are likely to have over-exposed themselves to the sun many years ago, when health warnings were not as prominent.
So although skin cancer is largely preventable - given the right health promotion advice - we are unlikely to see a significant fall off in the rate of skin cancer for another 30 years.
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