THE sun-safe message is soaking in, with kids taking the slip, slop and slap initiative right into adulthood, with Peel High teacher Greg Parker saying he’d noticed a huge attitude shift across generations.
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New research from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) showed the rate of melanoma in the population has almost double since 1982.
The figures show the rate grew from 27 to 49 cases per 100,000 people over that period.
“The good news is that for people under 40 the rate has dropped – from 13 cases per 100,000 in 2002 to about nine in 2016,” AIHW spokesperson Justin Harvey said.
Mr Parker, 58, was not surprised and said his children had been vigilant with sun safety throughout their lives.
“My kids are in their 20s and they are extremely sun safe,” he said.
“When I was young, I hardly ever wore sunscreen or a hat.”
Mr Parker was given 18 months to live after being diagnosed with a stage four melanoma three years ago.
The Tamworth teacher was included in a world-first trial of the drug Keytruda which has resulted in a “complete metabolic re-sponse”, with no evidence of melanoma currently in his body.
Mr Parker tells his construction classes at Peel High the greatest hazards on a worksite are manual handling and managing the elements. “It used to be rare to see blokes wearing shirts on a construction site and they would all have sock tans,” he said.
“That has definitely changed too.”
New England North West Cancer Council community engagement manager Dimity Betts said the findings “completely made sense.”
“You only have to look back a couple of decades, and you can see the attitude has changed so much,” she said.
“It’s not uncommon to hear people over 40 say they never wore sunscreen or a hat.”
Mrs Betts said there was a push to get people thinking more about prevention, rather than reacting to something unusual.
“While a lot of damage can be done, it’s never too late to start being sun smart .
