Yes, sun vacations of 30 years ago may still cause skin cancer today

In ‘Factcheck’, ‘De Standaard’ asks the opinion of experts in the field on a particular statement. In the ‘Factcheck’ of 4 April, the subject was sunburn and skin cancer and one of the experts was prof. Lieve Brochez.

Their statement that ‘Sun vacations of 30 years ago may still cause skin cancer today’ was denoted as ‘true’. The experts further explain: ‘Repeated sunburn, especially at young age, indeed increases the chance of developing melanoma, the most aggressive skin cancer. However, we have to stress that it may cause skin cancer, but won’t necessarily. It’s a bit like smoking and lung cancer. Will you get lung cancer from smoking one cigarette? Probably not, but it is possible. Your chances increase with the frequency you smoke. The same story goes for sunburn.

As we only realized the long term negative consequences of sunburn in the 80s, we expect the number of people with skin cancers to further increase during the coming years. However, with all campaigns since the 80s, we hope that the numbers will drop drastically from 2034 onwards.’

Read the full article (in Dutch) here.