UV sunbed skin cancer risk

According to Cancer Research UK, skin cancer rates are at an all time high, with around nine in ten cases caused by exposure to too much UV radiation from the sun and sunbeds. In fact, of the 21,000 cases of skin cancer in the UK this year it’s thought that 17,000 of them were preventable. It was with this in mind that people under the age of 18 in the UK were forbidden from using tanning beds in 2011 - but it’s believed that around a quarter of adults in the UK still do. There are also concerns that UV lamps used in nail salons can kill cells and that they could be linked with cancer. So, could our thirst for golden tans and immaculate manicures be putting us at real risk of serious illness? Speaking on the subject is dermatologist, Jane Sterling…

Jane - Every time you go out into the sun, the ultraviolet light affects the cells, the building blocks, of the skin and produces some damage to the DNA, the genetic messenger if you like, in the skin. Our skin usually repairs that damage quite well, but in doing so, you can get sunburn and sometimes that repair doesn't work quite right, nothing's perfect. And over the years, every time you get a little bit of not completely repaired DNA damage, those are kept in the skin and gradually they reach a threshold when a lot of little bits of damage can tip you over into getting skin cancer.

Chris - And which cells does that affect?

Jane - Well that can affect the melanocytes, those pigment producing cells and can also affect the surface epidermal cells. They're called keratinocytes and they can cause a different sort of skin cancer to the melanoma type skin cancer that arises from melanocyte damage.

Chris - And what should someone look out for? What might be the danger signs?

Jane - So melanomas usually appear as an enlarging dark, brownish black spot on the skin. And if something like that starts to appear and grow in a site where there's never been a mole before or where there's been a small mole, then see your doctor as a matter of urgency. And squamous cell cancers usually tip up a bit later in life as a rough raised bump. So they're a little bit more difficult to spot perhaps, but something appearing where there hasn't been anything before should also be looked at.

Chris - And is the mechanism you just described the same regardless of where I get the ultraviolet, whether I'm out there on a sunny day, or on the beach, or I go to a sun tanning parlour?

Jane - It's pretty well exactly the same. The doses, depending on how long you stay out in the sun or on the sun bed may be different, but the mechanism is exactly the same.

Chris - We know that sun exposure is linked to skin cancer and skin ageing, but is there evidence that sun tanning parlours are equivalently linked to skin cancer?

Jane - Yes, there is. People have looked back at people who've developed skin cancers at various points in their life and asked of course, how much sun exposure have you had over life? Have you lived abroad in very sunny places? Have you been a sun worshipper going on lots of sunny Mediterranean holidays, for instance? Or have you used sunbeds? And there are links with all of those to an increased risk of skin cancer. So people who've lived abroad in Africa or Australia, people who've loved to sunbathe and have had two or three Mediterranean holidays a year and people who have been regular users of sunbeds, all of those have a higher risk of getting skin cancer. Let's break that down into a sort of theoretical group of a hundred people aged 50 with skin cancer. A good proportion of those, I'm guessing now, but I would think that a good 50% of those would be able to say, well yes, I have had a lot of sun over my life. So you really want to get only a mild tan. And particularly that applies if you have the sort of genetic makeup that makes you even more prone to skin cancers. So that would be people with fair skin who burn easily. That's people with blonde or red hair, people with lots of freckles, people who have lots of moles and very, very important, and I think lots of parents are aware of this now, is that if you get a lot of sun exposure at a young age, that's even worse than getting it later in life.

Chris - What about other places where we use UV, both therapeutically and cosmetically. For instance, dentists use it. Also nail bars fuse certain nail accoutrements on fixed glues with ultraviolet exposure. So does that mean that there's a theoretical risk in those settings, both to the person who's being zapped with the UV, but also the person who's using the UV professionally to do those services?

Jane - Well, that's a good question and I can only give you a theoretical answer. Hopefully people don't have too many fillings, but people do sometimes go quite regularly to nail bars and quite regularly have that sort of ultraviolet light exposure. The nail bar workers should be protected against that because the nails are put under a little box-like thing that shouldn't allow the ultraviolet radiation to come out directly onto the people, but they need to be careful. But of course the intensity of it is on the nails themselves. I suppose it's perhaps in the last 10 years, I don't know really, that people have started to go to nail bars very regularly. Sometimes once a week or once a month. And this exposure to ultraviolet really wasn't thought about as being a particular risk, but it is now known that the damage that occurs to DNA that we see with going out in the sun can happen with the ultraviolet light used in nail bars.

Chris - If someone listening to this has had a lot of exposure, they may now be worried. And what can they do to minimise the risk of there being a problem?

Jane - I'm going to sound like an old fogey here, but I think that minimising the risk is not to do it. So sunbeds, I can't think of any reason really why people should want to do it as now there are such good creams that can be used to give a brownish appearance to the skin. They're very good. Nails, it's not essential to have gel nails. You can have beautiful nails in other ways, in my opinion. But for both of those, if the desire to have frequent treatments is excessive and unavoidable, then please keep it to a minimum. Is all I can say. I mean, a few episodes a year is probably okay, but regular use is probably not.