HEALTH WATCH : Sunshine Seminar

Americans are rightly alert to the risks of skin cancer, including often deadly melanoma, which is now the ninth most common form of cancer. Researchers increasingly point to the depletion of the Earth’s ozone layer as a major contributor to the rise in skin cancer cases. As ozone is depleted, more of the sun’s ultraviolet B rays, which are linked to sunburn and skin cancer, reach the Earth’s surface. This year an estimated 600,000 Americans will contract one or another form of skin cancer. Melanoma, Dr. Darrell Rigel of New York University told an American Cancer Society seminar, will account for 27,600 new cases, and kill 6,300 people.

One response, for those who deliberately or unavoidably invite sunburn, is to seek protection by applying commercial sunscreen products. The Food and Drug Administration, newly activist after a decade of dormancy, wants to make sure that consumers get the protection they seek. It’s now writing new rules that aim at banning useless screening products and at alerting consumers to products that provide--sometimes at a stiff price--more protection than is actually needed.

The FDA has a special concern about babies exposed to too much sun. William E. Gilbertson, director of the FDA’s over-the-counter division, says flatly that “our feeling is that young children should not be in the sun.” The FDA will have a formal sunscreen proposal ready for industry comment in a few months. The welcome prospect is that sometime next year consumers should be better able to evaluate just what they’re paying for.