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Local experts share how to prevent skin cancer during summer months
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BATON ROUGE — As summer begins in earnest after Memorial Day weekend, many Louisiana families will head to the pool, river, lake or beach to cool off from the hot sun.
However, more time outside without taking proper precautions to protect skin from the sun leads to an increased chance of developing harmful skin cancers like Melanoma.
"Melanoma is commonly found on the back. It's common to be on the bottom of the foot, and those are places that we can't see all the time," Mary Bird Perkins Regional Director of Cancer Support and Outreach Sharneitha Bradford said.
According to the Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, one in five Americans will develop skin cancer in their lifetime. More than five million Americans will be diagnosed with skin cancer this year.
"Skin cancer is very curable if detected early. Adults should examine their skin all the time. If you find any new growth, if you have new moles that pop up or even existing moles, you should get those checked by your doctors," Bradford said.
More bare skin and more time outside mean that it is particularly important during the summer months to apply ample amounts of sunscreen.
"You should wear about an ounce of sunscreen, which is equivalent to a shot glass. That's enough to cover your whole body," Bradford said.
Mary Bird Perkins added that people should reapply sunscreen every two hours. They should also reapply after going in the water or sweating and doctors recommend using lotion sunscreen over a spray bottle.
Lifeguards at the Dow Westside YMCA in Addis say they're always keeping an eye on not only the swimmers but the lifeguards as well when it comes to the sun.
"Hydration. Our lifeguards, I make sure they drink water, at least a bottle of water every hour on the hour, reapply sunscreen at least every time they get a break," Dow Westside Aquatics Coordinator Roberta Starnes said.
Mary Bird Perkins and the YMCA both recommend applying sunscreen more frequently for kids.
One thing Mary Bird Perkins is doing to educate and help people is their Prevention On-The-Go mobile unit, which offers free skin cancer screenings.
"We have a little small handheld machine where we can just look at a surface or a lesion or something on your body and we can see if anything is abnormal, if it looks suspicious, and we can make recommendations from there," Bradford said.
For tanning, they highly recommend not using a tanning bed.
"That's direct UV rays that you're putting on your body, so you're damaging all your skin surfaces and everything. It's going to make you more prone to having skin cancer," Bradford said.
Mary Bird Perkins is offering free skin cancer screenings at the Cancer Center on Essen Lane in Baton Rouge during the rest of May, National Skin Cancer Awareness Month.
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