Skin cancer specifically melanoma has a variety of risks. These include sun exposure, moles, skin type, personal history, …show more content…
The two greatest preventative interventions used in the world to avoid these diseases are skin cancer and protective clothing. However, you can not always completely cover your body, so sunscreen seems to be the most effective and widely used intervention. The effect of sunscreen is that it reduces the effect of UV-A and UV-B rays from damaging the skin (Skin Cancer 2016). Each sunscreen has a sun protection factor; this factor plays a profoundly major role in protection of your skin (Skin Cancer 2016). Normally it takes 20 minutes for skin to redden, but if we apply sunscreen which for example have an SPF of 15 it will take about 5 hours for the skin to redden, so using a sunscreen with 30 or 50 SPF will provide the full protection for a 24 hours (Skin Cancer 2016). To prove that sunscreen does have a profound positive effect on the skin a study from the clinical oncology is selected. The study takes place over a period of 10 years (1996 to 2006) in Queensland, Australia where skin cancer rates are high (Green et al). The study is on 1621 patients which were enrolled between 1992 and 1996 (enrollment was compulsory by law) (Green et al). The 1621 patients were classified in two groups, group A with sunscreen intervention and group B without sunscreen intervention (Green et al). 812 were added to the group A, and 809 of these patients were given group B (Green et al). At the end of this study, 11 new primary melanomas were found in the group which were asked to use sunscreen and 22 new primary melanomas were found in the group that were not asked to use sunscreen (Green et