The Australians know to slip on a shirt, slop on some sun screen and slap on a hat, but Irish men are ignoring the dangers of skin cancer. Ciarán Brennanreports
AS THE days get longer and hotter, the sights of beer-bellied men in soccer shorts pushing lawnmowers and construction workers stripped down to the waist will become the norm - all indicating that men just don't seem to be getting the message about the dangers of skin cancer.
With the bulk of outdoor labouring work still carried out by men, this exposes them to the sun and puts them at risk of developing skin cancer.
Research carried out in 2002 by the charity Cancer Research UK found that the incidence of malignant melanoma in men had increased by 12 per cent in the previous six years.
It found that the gap between men and women's rates of melanoma was narrower than it had been for 25 years, with up to 80 per cent of cases caused by exposure to the sun.
A sign that men are not heeding the health message was reinforced by a survey carried out two years ago by The Institute of Cancer Research in the UK which found that nearly two-thirds of men do not regularly check their skin for signs of skin cancer and nearly half do not know the signs or symptoms of skin cancer.
"All outdoor workers are at risk of getting skin cancer. It's not just those who sunbathe," says Norma Cronin, health promotion officer at the Irish Cancer Society. "Farmers are a group that we particularly focused on in the past. By nature of their occupation, farmers are exposed to excessive amounts of sun and therefore they have a higher risk of developing cancer."
Skin cancer is by far the most common cancer in Ireland among both men and women. One in every eight men and one in every 10 women will develop skin cancer by the age of 74 years.
Figures from 2005 show that 238 men in Ireland contracted malignant melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, in that year, while there were more than 3,300 cases of non-melanoma skin cancer.
"Non-melanoma is the most common type of cancer," says Cronin. "It's common, it's curable if detected early but it is also preventable."
Nine in every 10 skin cancers are caused by the sun's ultraviolet (UV) rays and can be prevented.
"The problem is there is such a huge lag time between the exposure to the damaging radiation and the effect so there is a lag of somewhere between 15 and 20 years between when the exposure occurs and when the damage becomes apparent so that makes it very hard to be proactive and preventative about it," says Dr Paul Carroll of the Beacon Clinic.
A native of Australia, Carroll says there has been a cultural change there in recent years on exposure to the sun."Among those in their teens and early 20s, if you have a tan, it is actually kind of frowned upon socially because you would have had to have been exposed to the sun to get it. Everybody knows somebody who has had a type of skin cancer," he says.
The turnaround has been largely due to constant and effective public health campaigns.
"The public message we had for years in Australia was 'slip, slop, slap' which was slip on a shirt, slop on some sunscreen and slap on a hat. They were the three things you were taught to do from a very young age and it makes a huge difference."
That message is also being hammered home to outdoor workers in Australia. Last November, the Cancer Council Australia launched a range of resources to help employers and employees work safely in the sun as part of activities for its National Skin Cancer Action Week.
Launching the campaign, the cancer council's chief executive, Prof Ian Olver, said: "UV radiation is a known carcinogen. We need workers and employers to understand that the sun is potentially as deadly as toxic chemicals or heavy machinery."
No one should have to risk their life for work, he said.
"The hazard is known and the controls obvious. We know how to prevent skin cancer, and therefore there is no reason that outdoor workers should be in more danger of developing skin cancer than others who work indoors."
The Irish Cancer Society has also engaged with employers here and Cronin advises outdoor workers to follow the society's SunSmart Code.
"It's about covering up and wearing a wide-brimmed hat or a hat with a neck flap to protect your neck," she says. "Sunscreen is very important and we recommend that they use greater than factor 15 and that they make sure to put it on 20 minutes before they go out into the sun and to reapply it regularly if they are sweating through work."
'My advice to all young people is: use sunblock'
From a young age, Edwin Breen loved to get outdoors
in all sorts of weather.
Now aged 72, he knows the damage that was being done to his skin from over- exposure to the sun and not taking any precautions.
For the past 25 years, he's had numerous operations to remove a number of malignant growths on his skin.
"In 1980, I noticed a thing at the corner of my eye," he says. "It wasn't healing and there was some bleeding. I went to a skin specialist and he cauterised it which he shouldn't have done. It came back again and I had surgery to remove it. Two years later it recurred a little further down and the doctor did surgery and gave me a skin graft and two years later it appeared again further down. Then I got nine half- minute sessions of radiotherapy."
But it did not end there.
"Right on the bridge of my nose there was an active growth and that had to be removed and stitched up," he says.
Today, Breen takes care of his skin, checking for any new growths and applying factor 50 sunblock every day, 365 days a year.
But he is conscious that the damage was done a long time ago when he was a young man.
"My advice to all young people, for their own sakes, would be to make sure they have sunblock on. I give myself as an example. I've been having numerous bits of surgery done for the last 25 years and if I'd used sunblock like they should be doing now, I would have escaped all of this."