Screaming headlines

   The headline on the AOL welcome screen said, "sunscreens slammed as cancer risk." Holy Cow, I thought. Don't tell me Kevin Trudeau was actually right about something. I'd better click through to get more information.
   When I did so, the headline on the AOL News page was a little bit different: Sunscreens Faulted on Cancer Protection. That sounds similar to the first headline, but it doesn't quite read the same, does it? When you read the article you find that sunscreens are not, as stated in the first headline, "slammed as [a] cancer risk." No, what you find is that most sunscreens do not offer as much protection against skin cancer as they could, but mostly because they tend to be applied incorrectly and too infrequently by users:

Many sunscreens say little about when to reapply - doctors say at least every two hours and after swimming or sweating. Nor do they say much about how much to use, roughly two tablespoons for an adult.

``Most people who use an SPF 15 get the protection equivalent to an SPF 5 because they put it on'' too thinly, said Dr. Martin A. Weinstock, chairman of the American Cancer Society's skin cancer advisory group and a Brown University professor.

While a higher SPF number means more protection, the difference is small: SPF 15 blocks about 93 percent of UVB rays and SPF 50, often more expensive, blocks about 98 percent.

Most sunscreens work by reacting chemically with the skin, so they don't start absorbing damaging rays right away and must be applied a half-hour before going outside, something many labels fail to note.

and:

Still, doctors say people shouldn't abandon sunscreen: They probably should use more.

``Sunscreens do protect against skin cancer,'' said Dr. Babar Rao, a dermatologist at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey. ``We definitely still need sunscreen, even on a cloudy day.''

Research has shown heavy sunscreen use lowersrisk of squamous skin cell cancer, which has a high cure rate if caught early. Another study found heavy sunscreen use in children reduces the number of moles, which can turn cancerous later, Weinstock noted.

(Bolding mine in the above.)
   So, is sunscreen a cancer risk? Sorry Kevin, no validation for you today. What's the moral of the story? Don't believe the headlines? Partly. I think a broader moral would be, think critically about every single thing you hear. Everything is not always as it seems, or as it is stated.

tags:Skepticism, News,