High Life / A WEEKLY FORUM FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS : Teen-Agers Screen Out Solar Peril

Teen-agers who most need sunscreens often neglect to use them, especially if their parents failed to insist that they do so, a recent study suggests.

Of 220 teen-agers surveyed, 81% said they spent most weekends in the sun, but just 9% always used sunscreen, and 33% never did, the researchers reported in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics.

“The results of this study are distressing,” said the authors, led by Beverly A. Banks of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

The researchers distributed a questionnaire in 1989 to teen-age patients at a clinic in a suburb of Washington. Although the survey cannot be generalized to the nation’s teen-age population, because it involved only upper- and middle-class whites, researchers said that is the part of the population that needs the most protection.

“The risk of skin cancer is highest in whites and increases with increasing socioeconomic status,” the researchers said.

They did not say why risk is associated with socioeconomic status, but the risk of getting potentially deadly melanoma cancer is linked with outdoor vacationing, probably more common among the affluent, said Dr. Bernard A. Cohen, director of pediatric dermatology at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore.

Previous research has indicated that a person younger than 20 is harmed more by the sun than an older person, in terms of melanoma and other types of cancer, said Dr. Darrell S. Rigel, associate professor of clinical dermatology at New York University Medical School.

Of the teen-agers in the study, 31% said they had experienced a blistering burn during the previous two summers.

Girls used sunscreen more than boys, and both sexes were more likely to use the products if they had a friend who routinely did so or if their parents insisted on sunscreen use.

Teen-agers with a family history of skin cancer were no more likely to use sunscreens than other youths, the study said.

The teen-agers said they did not use sunscreen because they “rarely” burned, they forgot it, or sunscreens were too messy. Ten percent said sunscreens interfered with a “good tan.”

Melanoma will afflict one in six Americans during their lifetime at its current rate, Rigel said. Its incidence is increasing faster than any other cancer, he said.

New U.S. cases numbered 32,000 in 1991, and 6,500 people died from melanoma last year, according to American Cancer Society estimates. About 2,000 people died last year from other forms of skin cancer, the society said.

“I never expected to see the day when girls would get sunburned in the places they do today.” --Will Rogers (1879-35)