Was reading the News earlier and saw that hospitals are reporting a drastic increase in treatments for skin cancer as peoples thirst for a bronzed body increase as package holiday prices come down.
I was in Corfu in the middle of August with my youngest son and between us we used 6 bottles of sunscreen, factor 30, to protect ourselves, we have a mild tan but neither of us wanted a tan as such. Yes we were out in the sun for most of the day but we kept out of it from 1-3.
Of course cancer can strike anyone at any time but why increase your chances by lying out in the sun for 10 hours a day, in low factor creams to get a tan? Why is the fashion industry obsessed with tanned/bronzed bodies?
I think the figure quoted was over £90 million to treat people with skin cancer and i wonder how many of those people treated have over used sun beds, just to be brown?
It isnt the sunbeds industry thats wrong, in fact using a sunbed to get a base tan is safer than going out in the sun milky white and then burning, but there are limits to how much sun bed use is recommended. Even records are kept by registered salons so you cant overuse them. If you ignore that advice and go to several salons a day you cannot then blame the sunbed shops if you are stupid enough to ignore that advice because now you have a melanoma.
When will common sense ever be applied?. Smoking was alleged to have been cool 30 years ago, look at the stigma now attached to that, when will people wake up to the effects of sunbathing? It isnt cool to be brown at the expense of giving yourself cancer.
