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A message about skin cancer for European Americans Fact: One in five children born this year will develop skin cancer sometime during their lives. Fact: The great majority of those children will be of European descent. Fact: People of Celtic (mainly, Irish and Scottish) descent are even more at risk than other European Americans. Luckily, skin cancer can be prevented! Cover your skin by wearing a hat, and by choosing long sleeves rather than short ones, when you’re going to be outdoors. Use a good sunscreen any time you plan on being in the sun for more than twenty minutes. Save as much of your outdoor work as possible for the early morning or the late afternoon, when the sun is less fierce. Avoid sunburn! One episode of blistering (and most of us have had several such experiences!) doubles your chance of developing skin cancer later in life. Be sure than a skin examination is part of your annual checkup - and learn how to detect skin cancer yourself. The American Cancer Society can tell you all the details. The Sun - and Us For thousands of years, our ancestors lived in climates where there was little sun. In order to get enough vitamin D, our skin developed low levels of pigmentation over many generations. This natural process helped us survive in cloudy, misty climes. Our society tells us that we have to be tanned to look beautiful or handsome. We see this in advertisements, in the movies - everywhere we look, especially in the summertime. The truth, of course, is that exposure to sunlight ages skin, bringing on wrinkles, rough spots, and even cancerous growths. When we envy that which we are not, isn’t it an implied put-down on ourselves? Maybe it’s time we questioned the idea that being tanned is better than being what we naturally are - a people with light skin.
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