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Is Your Sunscreen Dangerous?
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Is Your Sunscreen Dangerous?
Cancer-Causing Ingredients in Popular Sunscreens
Nneka Leiba, MPH
Environmental Working Group
July 6, 2010
Special from Bottom Line's Daily Health News
A s we’re all diligently slathering on sunscreen to prevent cancer, out comes a new report suggesting that ingredients in many brands -- including the most popular ones -- may actually raise cancer risk, and that’s not the only health problem associated with them. It isn’t just a single common ingredient that new research has raised some concerns about -- it’s far worse than that. Many widely available sunscreens contain potentially dangerous ingredients... provide inadequate protection... and are portrayed by their marketers as far more helpful than they actually are. The list of offenders includes leading brands that you know and trust and even some products designed just for babies.
When the Environmental Working Group ( www.ewg.org) issued its 2010 guide to the best and worst sunscreens, the nonprofit watchdog gave its OK to just 39 products -- which amounts to a mere 8% of the 500 sunscreens evaluated! When I saw this newest report, I immediately placed a call to EWG research analyst Nneka Leiba, MPH, to find out what’s going on and to see what she thinks we all should know about our sunscreens.
According to Leiba, the FDA bears some serious responsibility for this problem -- she said that the agency has had no mandatory regulations for sunscreens or their ingredients. (Regulations may be in place by October 2010, according to the most recent official estimate.) Companies have not been required to verify that sunscreens work... to test that their sun protection factor (SPF) levels are accurate... or to show that other claims, such as whether they are waterproof or protect against UVA rays, hold up.
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Addictive Tanning
When Tanning Turns Into an Addiction
Published: June 21,
Welcome to summer! For many of us, that means more time outdoors and less time lost putting on and taking off multiple layers of clothing. That in turn means more time and tissue exposed to the single biggest cause of skin damage and cancer: ultraviolet radiation.
Despite a flourishing market in sunscreens and, to a lesser extent, sun-protective clothing, as well as a dermatologists’ campaign going back to 1983, millions of Americans continue to abuse the rays that in small doses help maintain health but in larger doses can destroy it. And not just when the summer sun shines. For some who frequent tanning salons or own tanning beds, sun worship is a year-round activity.
Dermatologists, whose incomes are bolstered by the fallout from UV abuse, nonetheless express great frustration with their seeming inability to deter tanning behavior, particularly among adolescents and young adults, who are most at risk for the ill effects from these otherwise life-giving rays.
There are many explanations for this failure, including the widespread belief that people look better (read healthier and perhaps thinner) when they are tan. This notion has helped to foster the multibillion-dollar indoor tanning industry, supported by some young patrons as often as 20 times a month.
But in recent years, another explanation has emerged for which there is now considerable scientific support: the idea that exposing one’s skin to UV radiation has addictive potential.
As with alcohol, not everyone who is exposed becomes dependent on the sun. But there are enough UV abusers — one in five college students, perhaps half of beach habitués and 70 percent of indoor tanners, according to various studies — to warrant a new medical diagnostic category: tanning addiction.
3.5 Million Cases of Skin Cancer
When Dr. Richard F. Wagner Jr., a dermatologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, reported five years ago that as many as half of local beachgoers met the psychiatric definition of a substance abuse disorder, he received an e-mail message from a man in Canada who described himself as “a poster boy for your study.” The man said he traveled all over the world to maintain a tan, and even though he knew he could get cancer as a result, he could not stop.
In a new report in The Skin Cancer Foundation Journal, Dr. Robin L. Hornung and Solmaz Poorsattar of the University of Washington in Seattle wrote that the “continued purposeful exposure to a known cancer-causing agent suggests that factors besides lack of knowledge are driving individuals to tan.” Although many say that a tanned appearance is their strongest motivation for sunbathing and tanning bed use, “tanners also report mood enhancement, relaxation and socialization” as their reasons, the authors wrote.
And so the incidence of skin cancers, including potentially fatal melanoma, continues to rise. This year, 3.5 million new cases of superficial but often disfiguring skin cancers, and an estimated 68,720 melanomas, will be diagnosed among Americans.
Many people think a tan protects them by helping block the damaging effects of UV radiation. In fact, a tan represents skin damage. Even brief exposure to ultraviolet light can cause mutations in the DNA of skin cells, including the melanocytes, the host cells for melanoma. Accumulate enough of those mutations and a cancer can result.
“As we age, the number of mutations increase and our immunity wanes,” Dr. Wagner explained — a double whammy that greatly increases the likelihood of skin cancer.
Even those who escape cancer will eventually experience the aging effects of repeated tanning: loose, wrinkled, leathery skin that can make people look decades older than they are. My paternal grandmother, who lived a block from the beach in Brooklyn and swam daily in the years before sunscreens, had what we called “elephant skin” by her 50s. But my 90-year-old Aunt Gert, who lives nearby and winters in Florida but never went to the beach or sat in the sun, has the skin of a 60-year-old. Summarizing the mounting evidence for the addictive potential of UV radiation, Dr. Hornung said in an interview that frequent tanners showed signs of both physiological and psychological dependence. As with cigarette smoking and heavy drinking, which are “often practiced despite knowledge of their dangers,” she said, attempts to curtail UV abuse through education about its dangers seem to fall on deaf ears.
Clearly, something else is driving the behavior, and for some people that something seems to be addiction.
In Dr. Wagner’s study, conducted with Dr. Molly M. Warthan and Tatsuo Uchida, two tests of substance abuse were administered to 145 people basking in the sun on Galveston Island Beach. One is a modified version of the test often used to root out alcohol addiction. It’s called CAGE, an acronym for four questions: Have you ever felt you needed to cut down on your tanning? Have people annoyed you by criticizing your tanning? Have you ever felt guilty about tanning? Have you ever felt you needed to tan first thing in the morning — as an eye opener?
The authors, who published their report in 2005 in The Archives of Dermatology, found that 26 percent of the beachgoers met the CAGE criteria for addiction. And in a second test, a modified version of the psychiatric profession’s official diagnostic criteria for a substance abuse disorder, 53 percent of the respondents scored positively.
“Individuals who chronically and repetitively expose themselves to ultraviolet light to tan may have a novel type of ultraviolet-light substance-related disorder,” the report concluded. Release of pleasure-giving endorphins in the brains of UV abusers is the likely stimulus for tanning addiction, studies suggest.
Withdrawal and Prevention
Research by Dr. Steven R. Feldman and colleagues at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center demonstrated that frequent salon tanners experienced withdrawal symptoms when given the drug naltrexone, which blocks the pleasurable effects of narcotics. Frequent tanners, but not occasional tanning patrons, reported symptoms like nausea and jitteriness when naltrexone blocked their endorphins.
Dermatologists are uniformly in favor of strict regulations of tanning salons, especially prohibiting patronage by minors. Dr. Hornung (who told me she just lost a patient to melanoma — “a beautiful 45-year-old single mother of four children who had been an avid indoor tanner”) also advocates starting to teach children at a very early age to always use sunscreen and to avoid excessive sun exposure even when they do use it, since even the best sunscreens cannot fully prevent sun damage.
Just as child-restraint laws fostered routine seat belt use in older children and adults, wise sun habits initiated in early childhood could carry over for a lifetime — and a longer life.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 22, 2010, on page D7 of the New York edition.
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New Melanoma Drug Looks Promising
CHICAGO – Researchers have scored the first big win against melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. An experimental drug significantly improved survival in a major study of people with very advanced disease.
The results, reported Saturday at a cancer conference, left doctors elated.
"We have not had any therapy that has prolonged survival" until now, said Dr. Lynn Schuchter of the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania, a skin cancer specialist with no role in the study or ties to the drug's maker.
The drug, ipilimumab, (ip-ee-LIM-uh-mab), works by helping the immune system fight tumors. The federal Food and Drug Administration has pledged a quick review, and doctors think the drug could be available by the end of this year.
"People are going to have a lot of hope and want this drug, and it's not on their doctors' shelves," although some may be able to get it through special programs directly from its maker, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Schuchter said.
Melanoma is the most serious form of skin cancer. Last year in the United States, there were about 68,720 new cases and 8,650 deaths from the disease. Worldwide, more than 50,000 people die of melanoma each year.
"The incidence is rising faster than any other cancer," said one of the study's leaders, Dr. Stephen Hodi of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. "When it spreads to vital organs, it's almost always fatal."
Doctors also reported Saturday at the conference that an experimental drug for lung cancer patients with a certain gene showed extraordinary promise in early testing. The drug, Pfizer Inc.'s crizotinib, (crih-ZAH-tin-ib) targets a gene that promotes tumor growth and is found in about 4 percent of lung cancers, especially among younger, non-smokers.
Nearly 220,000 new cases of lung cancer are diagnosed each year in the United States alone, and it is the world's top cancer killer. Two other gene-targeted treatments, Tarceva and Iressa, help about 20,000 lung cancer patients annually in the U.S.
The skin cancer study involved 676 people around the world with advanced, inoperable melanoma who had already tried other treatments — a very grim situation. They were given one of three treatments: ipilimumab by itself, with another immune-stimulating treatment, or the immune-stimulating treatment alone.
After two years, 24 percent of those given the drug alone or in combination were alive, versus 14 percent of those given just the immune-stimulating treatment.
Average survival was 10 months with ipilimumab versus just more than six months for the others, which worked out to a 67 percent improvement in survival for those on the drug, said one of the study's leaders, Dr. Steven O'Day of the Angeles Clinic and Research Institute in Los Angeles.
Doctors hope the drug can provide more benefit if given earlier in the course of the disease and to less sick patients.
Ten percent to 15 percent of patients on ipilimumab had serious side effects related to the drug's actions on the immune system. Most were treatable with high doses of steroids, but 14 deaths were thought to be related to the treatment. That's still far fewer than deaths due to the cancer.
The study was funded by Bristol-Myers and Medarex Inc., a company that co-developed the drug and was bought by Bristol-Myers last year. A spokeswoman said Bristol-Myers has not yet set a price for the drug, but similar treatments for other cancers cost several thousand dollars a month or more.
Results were reported at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual conference in Chicago and published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione, Ap Medical Writer – Sun Jun 6, 3:49 am ET
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Skin Cancer rates soar for baby boomers
Skin Cancer Rates Soar for Baby Boomers
Cancer Research UK says people in their 60s and 70s are far more likely to suffer from malignant melanoma than their parents.
The charity blames the sharp rise on skin damage the baby boomers suffered in their youth, when cheap foreign holidays first became available and sun beds became popular.
Caroline Cerny, the charity's SunSmart manager, said: "Back then we knew less about sunburn and how closely it's linked to the development of skin cancer. We thought it was part of getting a tan and nothing to worry about.
"Now we know that's not true. We know sunburn is a serious sign that your skin has been damaged, that your DNA has been damaged, and getting sunburn really increases your risk of getting malignant melanoma."
The charity's figures show that back in the 1970s just seven in every 100,000 older people developed the cancer.
Now that figure is up to 36 in every 100,000.
And by 2024 the rate is expected to have increased to 49 in every 100,000. That is up another third.
Sue Deans developed malignant melanoma in her early 60s and blames her love of the sun as a teenager.
"I used to get what I thought was a nice colour," she said.
"Sometimes I overdid it. My skin would peel and I'd pick it off. That's what we did in those days. We did not think of the damage we were doing."
More than 10,000 people a year are diagnosed with malignant melanoma. Around 2,000 die.
Cancer Research UK says melanoma can be largely prevented by using sunscreen and seeking shade in the middle of the day.
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Many skin infections are self-induced!
Hospitals Could Stop Infections by Tackling Bacteria Patients Bring In, Studies Find
Hundreds of thousands of patients each year suffer from infections after surgery, and experts say more than half of those infections stem from bacteria the patients themselves are carrying in their nose or on their skin. Otherwise harmless bacteria can enter the body through surgical incisions and cause infections that can require expensive treatment, slow recovery or even cause death.
But two new studies suggest relatively simple ways hospitals can prevent many infections by killing the bacteria on the patient before surgery, with methods of screening, scrubbing or pretreating the patient that many hospitals do not typically use.
“This is going to be a huge help to the infection-control crowd,” said Marcia Patrick, a nurse and board member of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, who was not involved with either study. “How can we not do this? It would truly be penny-wise and pound-foolish. And it’s the right thing to do for patients.”
The studies, published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, examined infections that develop at the site of surgery, often around the incision, and afflict more than 300,000 patients a year in the United States.
While experts are increasingly trying to stop hospital-acquired infections by approaches including stepped-up hand-washing by doctors and nurses, the new studies looked at the bacteria patients may be carrying before entering the hospital, especially a common bacteria, staphylococcus aureus.
“About one-third of people at any one time carry this bacterium in their nose or on their skin,” said a co-author of one study, Dr. Henri Verbrugh, a professor of medical microbiology at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands. “It does not give them any problem, but if they go to a hospital and the skin is somehow breached, they are really prone to invasion or infection by their own bacteria.”
Dr. Verbrugh and colleagues tested patients for the bacteria using nasal swabs. They treated about 500 who carried the bacteria for five days with an antibiotic ointment on their noses and showers with soap treated with chlorhexidine, an antiseptic. After surgery, which sometimes occurred during the five-day treatment, those patients were 60 percent less likely to develop infections than patients receiving a placebo of ointment and soap.
The study included only patients whose operations were extensive enough to require at least five days of hospitalization. Dr. Richard P. Wenzel, an infectious disease specialist at Virginia Commonwealth University, who wrote an editorial about the studies, said he would recommend the approach primarily for serious operations like heart surgery or joint replacements, or patients with immune system problems.
But Dr. Wenzel said the method used in the second study should be adopted across the board. That study, conducted at six United States hospitals, compared the skin disinfectant hospitals use 75 percent of the time before surgery with another one. The researchers found that patients receiving the standard disinfectant, povidone-iodine, were significantly more likely to develop infections. Those cleaned with the alternative, chlorhexidine-alcohol, got 40 percent fewer total infections, and half as many staphylococcus aureus infections.
A study author, Dr. Rabih O. Darouiche, a professor of medicine at the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston, said chlorhexidine-alcohol was recommended a decade ago by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for cleaning when catheters were inserted, but had not been extensively studied for surgical preparation.
Ms. Patrick said most hospitals still used the iodine solution largely because “we’ve always done it this way.”
Cost is a factor with both studies’ methods. Dr. Darouiche said chlorhexidine-alcohol costs about $12 per patient compared with $3.50 for povidone-iodine. His study was financed by CareFusion, which makes both products. It had no access to the data.
Dr. Verbrugh, whose study was financed by several companies, said the most expensive part of his approach was the rapid-screening test for bacteria, about $20. He said some United States cardiac departments had begun using the nasal ointment for all heart surgery patients, without screening them for bacteria.
Experts not involved in the studies said the added costs of the methods were dwarfed by the money saved preventing infections, which can run to tens of thousands of dollars per patient.
“Everybody wins on this,” Dr. Wenzel said. “Patients obviously have less morbidity, and hospitals and medical centers and insurers save a lot of money.”
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New Model Of Skin Cancer Provides Insights On Second-Most Common Type Of Cancer
Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have developed a new model of skin cancer based on the knowledge that a common cancer-related molecule called Src kinase is activated in human skin-cancer samples.
"Our previous work demonstrated that Src kinases are activated in human squamous cell carcinomas of the skin. We modeled these observations by increasing the expression of the gene Fyn, a member of Src family of proteins, in mouse skin," explains senior author John T. Seykora M.D., Ph.D, assistant professor of Dermatology. In addition, prior work by the Seykora lab on a related protein called Srcasm, discovered by him in 2002, suggested that Srcasm may function as an anti-oncogene, a molecule that keeps others in check in order to control cell growth.
In this proof-of-principle study, published this month in Cancer Research, the authors found that genetically engineered mice expressing a K14-Fyn transgene develop precancerous lesions and invasive squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) spontaneously in 5 to 8 weeks. Skin SCCs are the second most common form of cancer, with greater than 250,000 cases annually in the US, leading to approximately 2,500 deaths.
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Cranberry, Pumpkin & Jell-O Can Work Miracles On Body
NEW YORK (CBS) ?
As we all prepare for the upcoming Thanksgiving feast we know that leftovers are sure to follow.
And CBS 2 HD has the recipes to put them to good use. But they're not to eat. These are dishes meant to nourish your skin.
From the pumpkin patch to the Thanksgiving table, what feeds your body can also be a feast for your skin.
"Two of the most popular ingredients that you're using for Thanksgiving are actually really good for your skin -- and that's cranberry's and pumpkin," said Jeannine Morris of beautysweetspot.com.
"So you can take your leftovers and actually make at-home skin treatments. For example, with pumpkin puree, you can actually make an at-home mask."
Using canned pumpkin and the juice from some lemons, mix a puree, spread it evenly over your face and leave it on for about 10 minutes.
"If you use it repeatedly as a mask it will help the tone and the texture. It has natural exfoliating benefits," Morris said.
Cranberries are recognized for their antioxidant properties when you incorporate them in your diet. And now you can feed your skin by using them topically.
Blend a puree with cranberries, adding oatmeal, sugar and oil.
"The cranberry exfoliate looks delicious, however, I would not recommend eating it," Morris said.
Rub it in a gentle circular motion for about a minute and then rinse with water.
"I would do it about once a week and with repeated use you'll find more natural tone and texture improving," Morris said.
There are plenty of products available that contain these ingredients, if there's nothing left at the end of your Thanksgiving feast. But you probably can count on there being a little extra Jell-O.
"Don't throw away the leftovers," Morris said. "Keep these for your eyes."
Apply eye cream first and then the take a serving of Jell-O that's been wrapped in plastic and put in the freezer for about 30 minutes and use it as a compress.
"To wake up those tired eyes we want to ease inflammation and sink our products into our skin," Morris said.
"There is a trend to using food-based products in a skin care regimen. Usually the rationale behind that is the foods that are high in antioxidants can have potential benefits for their skin; and if you can get them to be absorbed through the skin it's even better. That's the tricky part," said cosmetic dermatologist Dr. Cameron Rokshar.
So maybe you won't get every nutrient from a topical application, but reusing "leftovers" can still be an effective recipe to calm stressed skin or relieve puffy eyes.
"You're cooking it up and slathering it on your face you get the benefits and you get the rewards for your skin and also you did that for yourself," Morris said.
The leftovers we're talking about are not items right from the table. It's extra food that's not been prepared.
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Your genes can play a role in skin cancer
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Want to reduce your risk of skin cancer? Wear sun screen, of course. But two new studies suggest that choosing your relatives carefully could also be helpful.
One found that having an identical twin with melanoma increased a person's own risk of developing the disease much more than having a fraternal twin with this type of skin cancer. The other found that having a sibling or parent with one of several different types of non-melanoma skin cancer increased risk as well.
Several studies have suggested melanoma and other skin cancers run in families, but it can be difficult to tease out the difference between the influence of genes and environment. In the Australian study, Dr. Sri N. Shekar of the University of Queensland in Brisbane and his colleagues attempted to do so by looking at twin pairs in which at least one sibling had been diagnosed with melanoma.
They searched through thousands of cases of melanoma reported in Queensland and New South Wales and found 125 twin pairs. In four of the 27 identical twin pairs, both had melanoma, while three of the 98 fraternal twin pairs had both been diagnosed with the deadly skin cancer.
Based on these numbers, having an identical twin with melanoma increased a person's own risk of the disease nearly 10-fold, while melanoma associated with having a non-identical twin with the disease was roughly doubled.
This suggests, the researchers say, that some of the increased melanoma risk can be attributed to genes, in particular interactions between genes. They estimate that genes account for about half of the differences in risk between two people.
In the second study, Dr. Shehnaz K. Hussain of the University of California Los Angeles and colleagues looked at the Swedish Family-Cancer Database to gauge the risk for several types of skin cancer among siblings and children of people diagnosed with these diseases.
They found that people with a sibling or parent diagnosed with some types of skin cancer were more likely to develop skin cancers of various types, not just the ones their relatives had. When tumors occurred at parts of the body more likely to have been exposed to the sun (such as the face, compared to the torso), the familial risk was stronger.
Based on the findings, Hussain and colleagues conclude, a person's family history can be used to gauge their own skin cancer risk, and genetic studies could be a useful way to identify potential targets for treating or preventing the disease.
SOURCE: Journal of Investigative Dermatology, September 2009.
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Is there such a thing as a 'healthy tan'? .....No!
Tanning Beds Classified as Carcinogenic
 A new report issued in July places tanning beds in the “highest cancer risk” category. The agency also reclassified all UV radiation as carcinogenic to humans, including UVA, UVB and UVC.
A review by the International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded that the risk of melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer, increases by 75 percent when use of tanning beds and sunlamps begins before 30 years of age. This high-risk tanning behavior, seen primarily in females, could explain the increasing melanoma rates for females 15-29 years old.
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People with Psoriasis At Risk for Other Medical Conditions
People with Psoriasis At Risk for Other Medical Conditions
A new study by the National Psoriasis Foundation of 5,000 people with psoriasis reveals that people with psoriasis are at risk for developing other serious medical conditions, including heart disease, diabetes and obesity.
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