Sporting clothes not protecting people from sun
Tuesday September 1, 2009
President of the Australasian College of Skin Cancer Medicine Dr Neil Chortley says that it's important that sporting groups take better care to ensure they are protected from the sun because clothes have weak SPF (Sun Protection Factor) protection.
Dr Chortley said at an international skin cancer convention on the Gold Coast at the weekend that "it would be good to see a bit more compulsory use of sunscreen being pushed a little bit more in sports in general."
"Exposing our youngsters is where the damage is being done to peak UV radiation which is in between 10 and three."
Dr Chortley also said that clothing does not full protect sports players from the sun due to poor quality, and that people need to be better aware that they risk damaging their skin even when they are fully clothed.
"The average shirt has an SPF of about seven so when you wear a shirt in the middle of the day there's certainly still a lot of sunlight still coming through the shirt and that's where a lot of people are falling afoul," he told ABC News Online.
"It's the quality of your shirt that actually makes a difference in stopping the sunlight going through your shirt."
Cancer rate rising fears
Dr Chortley also said that it was not known whether skin cancer rates are rising.
"Of course we are the highest rate of melanoma in the world and that might be because most of the people that live in Australia are still predominantly of an Anglo-Celtic skin type which predisposes towards melanoma but I can't definitely says it's on the increase but that's what we fear."
