Kim67

That's the Dutch Oven effect I think.

EvannTel

I know what you mean but no is the answer, the effect you refer to is where UV rays effectively "convert" to IR rays making it hot in a greenhouse. Heat or IR rays do not have a skin cancer effect - its the UV you gotta watch.

Jen1977ni

Oh don't even go there, my OH cupcakes me with the car, he farts in it before we get out, then we go back to a hot, stuffy, STINKY CAR! It's minging!!! (But quite funny lol)

BadgeIsBack

Don't worry Jad, when the sky falls in on you, and it will happen, your worries will be over. You can take some solace from the fact that you have had what, a 30 year head start - and didn't use baby oil on your skin like the older generation did. These people getting bits of their head hacked off did not enjoy any of the later advice which came out when they were well into middle age..

Even on a 22 degree day you can feel the UV - if you know what I mean.

Dorothy

You can't "feel" UV rays any more than you can feel gamma rays or any other rays.

Not sure what older generation you're talking about but I used baby oil and Coppertone suntan oil on my skin when I was a teenager. You best not be calling me the older generation.

BadgeIsBack

That's why I put it in inverted commas as I knew the science was not right. Put it this way, in Melbourne, on a October day when it is 23 degrees, I can feel the sun on me and not just the ambient temp of 23 degrees....I suppose I am being unduly negative and just saying the sun is bad here.

I'm not very good at this being negative lark am I? More practise methinks...


I'm talking about baby boomers 60+ (arbitary) Jad's oldies - who tell me that they used no protection at all other than some form of oil - and that was to promote tanning - who hit adulthood way before sun awareness really took off (as we know it now) - I mean, for example, the slip slap slop advert dates back to 1982 - I think...could be wrong on the date too, naturally....

Alfresco

the side glass."

So I would hardly say it's possible. If you do get cancer from it then you were probably doomed anyway.

Just had both cars windows tinted. Sure blocks out loads of harsh sunlight.

Didn't need it in England.

chocciecake

BUT basal cell carcinomas ARE caused by sundamage,whether you have sunbather or not.
funnily enough, apparently 80 % of sun exposure is incidental, ie, going from house to car, shop to shop, knicking out to bring the washing in etc, as compared to actually day-out activities where you are aware you are being exposed.they most likely deduce that it is attributable to driving, because maybe that is the most common side of the body in this country to have them?

only a few minutes in the sun is enough to cause damage to my skin, whereas my husband can stay out all day and not get a burn ,being half african descent, yet looking at our faces with one of those uv sun light things, he has hardly any sun damage, yet my face looks like a train wreck! you can't see it on my skin yet, but it is there, lurking to turn me into a crusty old beast one day
i had my first basal cell carcinoma (superficial type) when i was 31, and have just had my 2nd diagnosed...now that i have had a 2nd, the dermatologist said the odds of me getting recurrent bcc's is 100%
they believe that for bcc and also melanoma, it is the damage done in your first 20 years that puts you most at risk unfortunately, and i had no control over what happened to me as a kid...
obviously, i need to be careful in the sun now too, but i can reverse the damage done that has caused me to get bcc so young.
for some ,it doesn't take that much exposure to damage your skin.

either way, if you get in a habit of putting on sunscreen in the morning, then you will be fine in the car whether or not you are worried about the glass.

chocciecake

i think it has been alot worse for the younger generations though, since we've had the hole in the ozone layer over oz.

my aunty, 64, smothered herself in baby oil and sunbaked all the time.
looks leathery and wrinkly now, but started off with the same skin tone as me, pale and freckly.
i have NEVER sunbathed or tried to get a tan,and stay out of the sun as much as i can as an adult, although i was burnt a bit as a kid, yet i have had skin cancer 30 years earlier than she ever did! despite her treating her own skin so atrociously.
bcc used to be a skin cancer of the elderly, seen in mostly over 70's whereas now it is common in people of my age group...mid 30's .
infact there has been a 2000% increase in melanoma incidence since 1930 with one in 50 being affected. (source: http://www.melanomaintl.org/melanoma_info/facts.html)
its pretty scary.
australia has the most cases of melanoma a year, followed by south africa, i think double the rate of britain, YET twice as many people in britain die from melanoma each year, as they are better at catching it early here...
the amount of women in the toddler group i went to in QLD ,who had their back and arms carved up by melanoma removal scared me..i'd never met so many people who had had melanoma, and qld has the highest amount of melanoma diagnoses each year, obviously...makes me almost want to choof off back to britain, as although i am aussie born, my skin type hails from the other side!

EvannTel

[QUOTE=chocciecake;8949300]BUT basal cell carcinomas ARE caused by sundamage,whether you have sunbather or not./QUOTE]

No! Read earlier post, sun is indicated in 66% of BCC's, so not all BCCs which your post implies whether meant to or not.

Also you rightly point out skin damage is often caused in the earlier years of life rather then later on. This is very true. Dorothy after her initial post mentioned when she was young she would use baby oil and coppertone to tan as a teenager - I am not a specialist but I suspect that had a lot more to do with her BCC than driving.

Also lets be clear here guys. There is a MASSIVE difference between BCCs and melanoma. BCCs as previously posted are rarely life threatening. Melanoma on te other hand is an entirely different matter/ I never knew my uncle who died at a young age from melanoma. I do however have happy memories of his son, until his demise also from melanoma far too early. With the remainder of the family we have too numerous BCCs but fortunately no more melanomas.

chocciecake

[QUOTE=EvannTel;8949355] i would agree baby oil probably has caused more damage than driving!
i wasn't trying to make it sound as if bbc was as bad as melanoma,i realise it isn't , (although i have conversed with a few people on my skin cancer forum who have metastatic BCC so it shouldn't be neglected to be taken care of when you first see it) but mentioned it because it is a massive risk in australia too, and have known alot of people who have had it compared to when we lived in britain.
melanoma is a terrible disease if it is not caught early!
i'm sorry your family has experienced it first hand...
unfortunately, sometimes a lesion appears and then can disappear,unnoticed, until someone is very sick, and they have melanoma show up in their brain or other internal area where there are melanocytes, and they never find the primary cancer. this happened to a dear family friend of ours ,so she never had a chance to find it while it was early enough.
i was reading something one of the researchers posted on the http://melanomaintl.org/ site the other day, explaining how this can happen, that they don't ever find the primary.
fortunately australian doctors are pretty aware of melanoma over here, and tend to spot things earlier.
a friend in the uk had a bleeding itchy mole that the doctor ignored for a while, not realising it was ominous...i couldn't believe it! i made her go and demand to have it biopsied and it was melanoma.
that said, bbc is indicitive of a large amount of sunexposure for a particular skin type, and for a fair skinned, freckly type, auctomatically puts me at higher risk of melanoma, so it is a warning sign to be vigilant.


heres some other stuff i have referenced:
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/276624-overview

i'm not posting it to be a know it all, btw, it is just good to read alot of information about something if it may affect you, and you can never read too much...
from all the information i have read, apart from the wiki article you referenced,cutaneous bcc is predominately caused by overexposure of the skin to the sun.
Other factors such as genetic predisoposition, trauma, chronic ulcers, burn scars, or some types of birthmarks may also lead to basal cell carcinoma, as evidenced by the fact that BCC can occur on parts of the body that are not exposed to the sun.
obviously in rarer cases bcc is found elsewhere, ie:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMra044151 cutaneous basal-cell carcinoma, which should be differentiated from the uncommon basal-cell carcinoma or basaloid carcinoma that arises in sites such as the prostate, pancreas, lung, cervix, salivary gland, thymus, and anal canal.


Excessive exposure to sunlight is the main cause of skin cancer. Sunlight contains ultraviolet (UV) rays that can alter the genetic material in skin cells, causing mutations. Sunlamps, tanning booths, and X-rays also generate UV rays that can damage skin and cause malignant cell mutations.

What are risk factors for developing basal cell carcinoma?

Light-colored skin, sun exposure, and age are all important factors in the development of basal cell carcinomas. People who have fair skin and are older have higher rates of basal cell carcinoma.


The face, however, remains the most common location for basal cell lesions. Weakening of the immune system, whether by disease or medication, can also promote the risk of developing basal cell carcinoma. Other risk factors include

* exposure to sun. There is evidence that, in contrast to squamous cell carcinoma, basal cell carcinoma is promoted not by accumulated sun exposure but by intermittent sun exposure like that received during vacations, especially early in life. According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun is the main cause of skin cancer. The risk of developing skin cancer is also affected by where a person lives. People who live in areas that receive high levels of UV radiation from the sun are more likely to develop skin cancer. In the United States, for example, skin cancer is more common in Texas than it is in Minnesota, where the sun is not as strong. Worldwide, the highest rates of skin cancer are found in South Africa and Australia, which are areas that receive high amounts of UV radiation.


http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/276624-overview
Basal cell carcinomas have a typical body distribution: 70% on head (most frequently on face1 ), 25% on trunk,2 and 5% on penis,3 vulva,4,5 or perianal skin. Very rarely, other organs are affected.6 Basal cell carcinoma has a high frequency in older men who have a long history of unprotected exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light. Basal cell carcinoma can develop on unexposed areas; cases of basal cell carcinoma of the prostate have been reported. In a few patients, the contributing factors are contact with arsenic,5,7 tar, coal, paraffin,8 certain types of industrial oil, radiation exposure, scars (ie, burn complications),9 xeroderma pigmentosum,10 vaccinations, or even tattoos.

The DNA of certain genes is often damaged in patients with basal cell carcinoma; therefore, inheritance may be a factor. Most DNA alterations result from damage caused by exposure to sunlight.


this study was quite interesting too:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9918420

Parallel risk assessment of melanoma and basal cell carcinoma: skin characteristics and sun exposure.

Rosso S, Zanetti R, Pippione M, Sancho-Garnier H.

Piedmont Cancer Registry, CPO Piemonte, Centro per la Prevenzione Oncologica, Turin, Italy. [email protected]
Abstract

In this study we compared the strength of the association of constitutional factors and sun exposure with cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM) and basal cell carcinoma (BCC). We analysed 260 incident cases of CMM, 425 incident cases of BCC and two sets of population controls from previous case-control studies conducted in Turin, Italy. Simultaneous comparison was accomplished by comparing separate simple logistic and polytomous logistic regressions. Tendency to sunburn was shown to be the most important risk indicator for both types of tumours, being associated with a two- to three-fold increase in risk for CMM and a two-fold increase in risk for BCC. Intermittent and intense sun exposure, as during beach holidays, increased the risk of both CMM and BCC, while prolonged exposure to sun, as during outdoor occupations, was not associated with CMM or BCC. The increase in risk during beach holidays occurred mainly during childhood for CMM cases, while for BCC cases it also continued during adulthood. Analysis of the independent effect of risk factors confirmed the role of skin phenotype (eye colour odds ratio [OR] = 1.6, tendency to sunburn OR = 2.1) and intermittent sun exposure (sunburns in childhood OR = 3.8, sun exposure during beach holidays OR = 1.2) in CMM. Risk of CMM showed a significant increase when sun exposure exceeded the threshold of about 3500 h during beach holidays cumulated in a lifetime. In contrast, the role of skin phenotype in BCC is less strong, but cumulated hours of sun exposure during beach holidays in a lifetime showed a constant risk rise with an early plateau at a low exposure level.

sorry for the long post, but i thought some might find some of this interesting.
at least those who grew up in britain ,and didn't get the sundrenched holidays on the beach as kiddies (unless you went to spain etc all the time) got some advantage over us poor aussie kids left to fry out in the sun!
i remember some good blisters on my back, and peeling large sheets of skin off my legs and sticking it to the melamine table at dinner time...
so far , i have only had bcc's on my back/shoulder, but am loathing the first one that pops up on my face, as i don't want the scars, or like my aunty who has squamous cell carcinomas now popping up all over her face....

Cheetah7

My GP in London was shit with moles, I would ask him to check them and he would say 'ask the nurse'. I would ask the nurse and she said it looked fine. Got to Australia, had my first skin check up, he observed this particular mole for 3 months and then removed it.

I have yearly check ups now, my check up is in 2 weeks and he does a vitamin D test as well, my results always come back low and I have to take Osteovit or whatever its called.

Cant wait to afford having my windows tinted, I definitely notice the difference with tinted windows and even if I get the slightest protection from the sun, that will do me.

chocciecake

i've never had my vit D checked.
do they charge you for it here?
my skin cancer doctor told me i would have to watch it, as i need to cover up/use sunscreen, so might not get enough...
apparently you are at greater risk of an internal type cancer if you are low in vit d, but then you get too much sun to get your vit d and end up a skin cancer...
can't win...


i guess the lesson is to keep our kids safe from an early age since we know the dangers these days and try and keep our selves from getting further damage now.
BTW is anyone else using the allmedic range of products from their skin cancer doctor?
amazing stuff....look at the difference in pics on page 3 of the pdf of how much it clears up actinic keratosis in a month :http://www.allmedic.org.au/images/st..._August_09.pdf
my skin does not yet look like that at my age, but it certainly feels much better, and is a good way to deal with some of my sundamaged skin...

jad n rich

[QUOTE=chocciecake;8949553]
Well I appreciated your time in posting that.

I have now had 3 BCC cut out. Interesting that I didnt spend my childhood in Aus, only the last 10 years, I DONT do any form of sunbathing, however I do have fair hair, skin, eyes.

I was protecting myself and doing all the right things. However its the sheer strength of the UV radiation, combined with the fact most of the sun you get is incidental - walking to the car, sitting by an open window, walking the dog at 8 am not realising the UV levels are already very high that early. And before you know it you have the first bits cut out and then more.

It is very scary to see how many people are just covered in scars where suncancer bits have been cut off. Its almost as if its normal in OZ to have a back or face with a 10/20/50 scars, that is disturbing because its seems some almost accept if they get it cut off its end of, but even when the little mole/spot is cut out, thats not end of, the damage may be elsewhere too, you just cant see it yet.

15 year old has 2 scars already. Riding bikes to school in the early years, nice thin white school shirt, and this was never mid summer just the mild days.

UV levels here are extreme, I agree you feel the suns 'burn' as in intensity like its boring into you. Its not the ideal climate when UV levels dictate your safe in the sun for 6/7 minutes before you will burn, hence the incidental washing line damage we keep hearing about.

I appreciate some people dont worry about it, even joke about it. MY concern is how quickly and how little sun we have had yet still been affected by BCC.

On the some people dont worry about it side, my partners an aussie, never wore sunglasses, hat, shirt on building sites till all the safety rules came in, handled aspestos on building sites without any protection and it still goes on if they can get away with it rides motorbikes, sprays chemicals without as much as a mask, and yet despite all this has only had one medical matter in his life, severe eye damage, $7000 of surgery - fixed. Just reckons no point worrying about it. Each to their own
Must add though he looks 20 years older than me

chocciecake

15 year old with 2 cut out already?
thats's scary, isn't it! gee...
my brother has similar skin type, but pays no attention to it, so he is a constant ruddy orangey colour, you know that colour that people who don't tan go when they are constantly in the sun? he also is living up in qld at the moment, and works outdoors..i don't know if he has every had anything, -never mentioned it, but knowing the type of bloke he is, he wouldn't even noticed if he did, which is a worry.
but i've had two already!
i kind of thought i would be fine for melanoma, as no one in my family has ever had it before, and i was getting superficial basal cells (which are the most common type that under 40's get apparently) but from all the research i have done, since the skin cancer doctor warned me, i now know that having basal cell carcinomas are indicitive of a large amount of sun exposure,which puts me at more risk of a scc or melanoma.
i too never sunbaked etc, but my english rose skin cant even cope 5 mins on the beach with out a colour change, so obviously whatever sun i got was too much for me.
i have seen horrendous stuff in my googling, as someone else mention.pics of men with huge circles cut out of their head,skingrafted ,and left with a big hollow, disfigured faces from bcc eating it away, or even when sugically repaired,theres not a lot of spare skin on the face.
i am terrified that theres nothing i can do about the previous skin damage from when i was a kid, but i am vigilant and have caught my two early, so the latest one the doctor has tried freezing, to see if it will go away, as it was only 6mm, before he cuts, to avoid a scar.

the first one, i had photodynamic therapy to treat, and it removed it in 2 sessions and left the skin looking completely normal.
photodynamic therapy involves the use of a photosensitising cream applied to the lesion for a period of time, and then it is hit with a specific light frequency, which ONLY destroys damaged cells. fantastic technology.
that was on the NHS, here, you have to pay for it
i found a place that would treat my recent lession for $460, but tried the freezing first to see if that works as it was free.
photodynamic therapy works on some forms of bcc, depending on the depth, some forms of scc, and also actinic keratosis.
if you have that kind of sundamaged skin ,covered in actinic keratosis,you often see on older people,where the skin has reddish marks and scaliness, the whole area can be treated with a field treatment of PDT ,which destroys the sundamaged cells, and therefore helps prevent a large amount of cancers popping up in the future, as does that allmedic cream i am using.
although i have "great skin for my age" at 36, with no wrinkles, the sundamage is underlying the surface, and i hope to avoid that scaley look even happening in the future by doing what i can now to help the skin.

unfortunately, alot of older people seem to get the most destructive lesions,i have seen in medical pictures, as they seem to neglect to get them seen to.
i don't know if they just think its part of aging to get sores, or if they just think they're not vain enough to bother, but it is frightening the destruction they can do if left for too long!
its good that schools make kids wear hats and stuff these days, as we never did when we were young.