Experts are warning Canadians not to heed misinformation spread online that sunscreen can cause cancer, stressing that proper use of the right lotions or sprays is, in fact, one of the best ways to prevent potentially deadly ailments like melanoma.
Quebec’s Order of Chemists warned last week against what it called a worrying trend circulating on social networks where some influencers spread false and misleading information about sunscreen, claiming that its ingredients are harmful to the skin and can cause cancer. The group said the assertions, devoid of scientific basis, can endanger public health.
One such influencer on TikTok recently warned their 570,000 followers to not use any sunscreen whose ingredients have “any funny words other than zinc.”
Julia Carroll, a dermatologist in Toronto, says much of the misinformation fails to look at the medical literature as a whole on sunscreen ingredients, which points to their safety.
“I’m a board-certified dermatologist,” Carroll said. “I have 20 plus years of training and education and we dedicate ourselves to looking after the health of our patients’ skin. And one person on TikTok that just happens to have a lot of followers can sway someone’s opinion. It’s really frustrating for all of us.”
She says some influencers overlook how it’s the dose that makes the poison. Too much of almost any substance can kill you while, in small amounts, even toxic substances like botulinum toxin can be safe.
Some influencers claim certain sunscreen ingredients cause cancer or other ailments. Others say sunshine is the best way to get vitamin D.
According to the Canadian Cancer Society, about 65 per cent of melanoma cases are due to ultra-violet (UV) radiation, the main source of which is the sun. Melanoma is a form of skin cancer that starts in the skin’s pigment-producing cells or melanocytes.
Skin cancer survivor stresses importance of checking moles frequently
Maureen Meehan, a London, Ont., resident who was diagnosed with Stage 3 melanoma in 2017 and had successful surgery, shares how to check moles in areas you can’t reach and why you shouldn’t take the threat of skin cancer lightly.
The authors of a report on projected estimates of cancer in Canada for 2024 noted the incidence of melanoma continues to increase for both males and females, although mortality has remained largely stable.
Cheryl Peters, a senior scientist at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control and B.C. Cancer, attributed the rise in melanoma to a combination of factors. People may expose more skin to stay cool during hotter summers with climate change, she said. Canada’s aging population also matters since the risk of most cancers increases the older you get.
Check UV index
In Canada, weather forecasts and apps include information on the UV index.
“Once you start to hit that UV index of 3, you really want to be wearing your sunscreen and reapplying it regularly,” Peters said on CBC Radio’s Just Asking.
The first layer of defence is to reduce time in the sun during its peak rays of 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., by seeking shade and covering up as much of your skin as you can with clothing that is made from tightly woven fabric or clothes labelled with a UPF (UV protection factor), a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses.
LISTEN | Myths on the rise:
25:59Dispelling dangerous myths about sunscreen
It’s true that a bit of sun exposure does help the body produce vitamin D, which is important for our bones and other health aspects.
But Carroll says people shouldn’t rely on it to get their vitamin D. “If vitamin D is really important to you, the easiest way and most consistent way to get it is through a supplement,” she said.
Sunscreen explained
Sunscreen comes in two major types, mineral and chemical.
Mineral sunscreens contain zinc oxide or titanium dioxide. The mineral flecks create a barrier reflecting UV light before it penetrates the skin. Because mineral sunscreens create a physical block and aren’t absorbed, the formulations can have a white appearance.
Chemical sunscreens come as creams or sprays. The ingredients form a thin protective film that absorbs UV rays and converts them into heat before they penetrate the skin.
Dermatologist Dr. Monica Li discusses the meaning of SPF and the differences between chemical and mineral sunscreens.
Canadian guidelines recommend making applying sunscreen part of your morning routine and putting on a “generous amount” — one to two teaspoons for the head and neck, and two to three tablespoons for the body of an average-sized adult.
Guidelines laid down by the Canadian Dermatology Association require an SPF rating of at least 30.
Experts also recommend broad-spectrum sunscreens that protect against both UVA rays, which lead to signs of aging like wrinkles, and UVB rays, which lead to sunburn.
Chemical sunscreens can lose their efficacy when exposed to extreme heat according to a 2012 study in the journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. You can tell if sunscreen may have been exposed to extreme heat if its components have started to separate.
So during extreme heat, when temperatures reach 32 C or above, with high humidity, for at least a few days, mineral sunscreens are preferable, says Jacqueline Watchmaker, a dermatologist in Scottsdale, Ariz., and a spokesperson for the academy.
Otherwise, there isn’t a health-based reason to choose one type of sunscreen over another, says Peters, who researches the prevention of occupational and environmental chronic diseases like cancer.
Chemical sunscreens can cause a skin reaction like a rash in a small number of people, she says. In those cases, shift to a mineral-based product.
Also, chemical sunscreens are suspected of causing harm to some coral reefs so if you’re vacationing in areas with reefs, that’s another time to consider using a mineral-based option, Peters says.
Lip balms that have a SPF rating are also an important form of protection that a lot of people miss, Peters said.
A woman covers herself with an umbrella during the heat wave in Mexico City in March. Clothing and a wide-brimmed hat can help protect skin from the sun’s damaging UV rays. (Quetzalli Nicte-Ha/Reuters)
MILWAUKEE (AP) — Whooping cough is at its highest level in a decade for this time of year, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.
There have been 18,506 cases of whooping cough reported so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That’s the most at this point in the year since 2014, when cases topped 21,800.
The increase is not unexpected — whooping cough peaks every three to five years, health experts said. And the numbers indicate a return to levels before the coronavirus pandemic, when whooping cough and other contagious illnesses plummeted.
Still, the tally has some state health officials concerned, including those in Wisconsin, where there have been about 1,000 cases so far this year, compared to a total of 51 last year.
Nationwide, CDC has reported that kindergarten vaccination rates dipped last year and vaccine exemptions are at an all-time high. Thursday, it released state figures, showing that about 86% of kindergartners in Wisconsin got the whooping cough vaccine, compared to more than 92% nationally.
Whooping cough, also called pertussis, usually starts out like a cold, with a runny nose and other common symptoms, before turning into a prolonged cough. It is treated with antibiotics. Whooping cough used to be very common until a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, which is now part of routine childhood vaccinations. It is in a shot along with tetanus and diphtheria vaccines. The combo shot is recommended for adults every 10 years.
“They used to call it the 100-day cough because it literally lasts for 100 days,” said Joyce Knestrick, a family nurse practitioner in Wheeling, West Virginia.
Whooping cough is usually seen mostly in infants and young children, who can develop serious complications. That’s why the vaccine is recommended during pregnancy, to pass along protection to the newborn, and for those who spend a lot of time with infants.
But public health workers say outbreaks this year are hitting older kids and teens. In Pennsylvania, most outbreaks have been in middle school, high school and college settings, an official said. Nearly all the cases in Douglas County, Nebraska, are schoolkids and teens, said Justin Frederick, deputy director of the health department.
That includes his own teenage daughter.
“It’s a horrible disease. She still wakes up — after being treated with her antibiotics — in a panic because she’s coughing so much she can’t breathe,” he said.
It’s important to get tested and treated with antibiotics early, said Dr. Kris Bryant, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Norton Children’s in Louisville, Kentucky. People exposed to the bacteria can also take antibiotics to stop the spread.
“Pertussis is worth preventing,” Bryant said. “The good news is that we have safe and effective vaccines.”
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AP data journalist Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
How a sperm and egg fuse together has long been a mystery.
New research by scientists in Austria provides tantalizing clues, showing fertilization works like a lock and key across the animal kingdom, from fish to people.
“We discovered this mechanism that’s really fundamental across all vertebrates as far as we can tell,” said co-author Andrea Pauli at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna.
The team found that three proteins on the sperm join to form a sort of key that unlocks the egg, allowing the sperm to attach. Their findings, drawn from studies in zebrafish, mice, and human cells, show how this process has persisted over millions of years of evolution. Results were published Thursday in the journal Cell.
Scientists had previously known about two proteins, one on the surface of the sperm and another on the egg’s membrane. Working with international collaborators, Pauli’s lab used Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence tool AlphaFold — whose developers were awarded a Nobel Prize earlier this month — to help them identify a new protein that allows the first molecular connection between sperm and egg. They also demonstrated how it functions in living things.
It wasn’t previously known how the proteins “worked together as a team in order to allow sperm and egg to recognize each other,” Pauli said.
Scientists still don’t know how the sperm actually gets inside the egg after it attaches and hope to delve into that next.
Eventually, Pauli said, such work could help other scientists understand infertility better or develop new birth control methods.
The work provides targets for the development of male contraceptives in particular, said David Greenstein, a genetics and cell biology expert at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the study.
The latest study “also underscores the importance of this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry,” he said in an email.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Patients who are older, don’t speak English, and don’t have a high school education are more likely to experience harm during a hospital stay in Canada, according to new research.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information measured preventableharmful events from 2023 to 2024, such as bed sores and medication errors,experienced by patients who received acute care in hospital.
The research published Thursday shows patients who don’t speak English or French are 30 per cent more likely to experience harm. Patients without a high school education are 20 per cent more likely to endure harm compared to those with higher education levels.
The report also found that patients 85 and older are five times more likely to experience harm during a hospital stay compared to those under 20.
“The goal of this report is to get folks thinking about equity as being a key dimension of the patient safety effort within a hospital,” says Dana Riley, an author of the report and a program lead on CIHI’s population health team.
When a health-care provider and a patient don’t speak the same language, that can result in the administration of a wrong test or procedure, research shows. Similarly, Riley says a lower level of education is associated with a lower level of health literacy, which can result in increased vulnerability to communication errors.
“It’s fairly costly to the patient and it’s costly to the system,” says Riley, noting the average hospital stay for a patient who experiences harm is four times more expensive than the cost of a hospital stay without a harmful event – $42,558 compared to $9,072.
“I think there are a variety of different reasons why we might start to think about patient safety, think about equity, as key interconnected dimensions of health-care quality,” says Riley.
The analysis doesn’t include data on racialized patients because Riley says pan-Canadian data was not available for their research. Data from Quebec and some mental health patients was also excluded due to differences in data collection.
Efforts to reduce patient injuries at one Ontario hospital network appears to have resulted in less harm. Patient falls at Mackenzie Health causing injury are down 40 per cent, pressure injuries have decreased 51 per cent, and central line-associated bloodstream infections, such as IV therapy, have been reduced 34 per cent.
The hospital created a “zero harm” plan in 2019 to reduce errors after a hospital survey revealed low safety scores. They integrated principles used in aviation and nuclear industries, which prioritize safety in complex high-risk environments.
“The premise is first driven by a cultural shift where people feel comfortable actually calling out these events,” says Mackenzie Health President and Chief Executive Officer Altaf Stationwala.
They introduced harm reduction training and daily meetings to discuss risks in the hospital. Mackenzie partnered with virtual interpreters that speak 240 languages and understand medical jargon. Geriatric care nurses serve the nearly 70 per cent of patients over the age of 75, and staff are encouraged to communicate as frequently as possible, and in plain language, says Stationwala.
“What we do in health care is we take control away from patients and families, and what we know is we need to empower patients and families and that ultimately results in better health care.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
