With skin cancer second only to lung cancer in prevalence, many Britons are risking their lives to get a tan. BARBIE DUTTER reports
WHEN the foreign package holiday was born in Britain almost 50 years ago, there were few health warnings to temper the collective excitement of a sun-starved nation.
Pallid office workers leapt at the chance to spend an annual fortnight sizzling in the sun on a continental beach. By the early Seventies, foreign breaks had become a widespread institution and tanned skin synonymous with improved health and greater beauty.
The fashionable tan, however, left an unwelcome legacy in the shape of an alarming rise in the incidence of skin cancer.
The latest Government figures - that skin cancer is now the second commonest cancer after lung cancer, with cases and deaths up 50 per cent between 1974 and 1991 - tell a story of behavioural patterns and attitudes towards the sun that are up to 20 years old.
Skin cancer can take two decades to develop, and current patterns will not be measured until the 21st century. And while Britons are now aware that unprotected sunbathing is bad for their health, campaigners still have work to do.
The concern of the Health Education Authority is focused as much on domestic behaviour as that of Britons abroad. Around half of all sunburn cases arise in this country - in the garden, on football fields, or simply walking down the street with no protective clothing or cream.
"When people go to the beach with the specific intention of sunbathing, they generally put a hat or sunscreen in their bag, along with their book and their towel," said Katie Aston, the HEA's cancer campaign manager.
"But it is not an automatic reflex, such as putting an umbrella in your bag during the winter months. So on sunny days, a large amount of the time people are wandering around with no protection at all."
A recent HEA survey found that 29 per cent of men believed their skin "rarely burns and tans easily" compared with 23 per cent of women. Men were also less likely to use sunscreen than women - 61 per cent, compared with 74 per cent respectively.
That fact will be spotlighted during the HEA's annual Sun Awareness Week, to be launched on Sunday. A poster features a man with a sunburnt back, and bears the slogan: "My back is killing me."
Miss Aston said: "We are beginning to see in this country that the incidence of skin cancer among women is higher than men, but men are much more likely to die of it because they are less likely to use sunscreens, and are less likely to go to the doctor than women."
She said that this summer, a quarter of the country's population would experience at least one incident of sunburn - but among 16 to 24-year-olds that figure would rise to nearly half.
Farmers, builders, road workers and others who work outdoors are more at risk than most from non-melanoma skin cancers, by far the most prevalent and caused by cumulative long-term exposure to the sun. The most dangerous form - malignant melanoma, which causes around three-quarters of skin cancer deaths - is associated with short bursts of strong sunlight such as that experienced during holidays abroad.
The array of sun-screening lotions, creams and sprays that cram chemists' and supermarket shelves during the summer holiday months bears testimony to the fact that British holidaymakers are more inclined to protect their skin.
But health researchers have found that in Britain the healthy respect with which the sun should be regarded is still conspicuous by its absence.
Last year a team from Exeter University conducted research in which 132 British beachgoers at a Devon resort were compared to 142 Italians at Viareggio, north-west Italy. While the Britons were readier to acknowledge the risk of sunbathing, they were almost twice as likely as Italians to say that lying on a beach was their ideal holiday.
The number of skin cancer cases rose by more than 90 per cent between 1974 and 1989, although four out of five cases could have been easily avoided by taking precautions such as using sunscreen, wearing long sleeves and hat, and not staying too long in the sun.
Most of the 40,000 cases each year are fully curable, but have to be detected early and treatment can be lengthy and disfiguring.
"There are huge psychological and social benefits linked to enjoying the sun," added Miss Aston. "We can't order people to stay inside. But we can urge them to respect the sun, because there are downsides such as premature ageing of the skin and skin cancers that can kill you."
