What Does That SPF in Sunscreen Really Mean?
FRIDAY, Aug. 18 (HealthDay News) — Sunscreens have long been an ally in the battle against skin cancer, but experts say that people still overestimate just how much protection these products can provide. The bad news is that skin cancer rates have continued to creep upward, at about 3 percent a year, since the early 1980s, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That includes melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, which is estimated to kill nearly 8,000 people in the United States annually. Vigilant, proper sunscreen use can certainly help stem the skin cancer epidemic, so what are people doing wrong? One mistake is believing that sunscreen is all you need to ward off the sun, and another is that the higher the SPF, the longer you can stay in the sun, experts say. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been trying to tackle that problem by allowing manufacturers to only market SPF 30-plus on their product labels, since they believe that any higher va
