Is the UV amount one receives as a child important even in later years?
Yes. Children should not be overexposed to UV radiation: sunbathing should be strongly discouraged. UV exposure, and especially sunburns, in early life can substantially increase the skin cancer risk later in life (especially the risk of basal cell carcinoma and melanoma). Even if the risk is related to total accumulated exposure, as appears to be the case for a part of the non-melanocytic skin cancers (SCC), exposures early in life still may carry a greater risk. There is a long lag time, typically of several decades, between exposure and the development of a tumour. Therefore, early exposures have a greater probability in resulting in a tumour.
