Sunscreen use picking up

By REBECCA WALSH, health reporter

New Zealanders are getting better at using sunscreen but more than half still do not use it when they are outside at the weekend.

A report into New Zealanders' sun behaviour and attitudes shows fewer people are getting sunburned than three years ago.

Still, half the people surveyed reported that a suntan made them feel better about themselves and one in five believed a suntan protected them against skin cancer.

The triennial report for the Cancer Society and the Health Sponsorship Council surveyed 1250 people aged 15 to 69 years last summer.

On average, people spent two and a half hours outdoors from 11am to 4pm, peak sun times at the weekend. Men were more likely to have spent between four and five hours outside.

Only two in five people who went outdoors spent some time out of the sun and in the shade.

Cancer Society health promotion manager Carolyn Watts said that although some of the results were encouraging - two out of five people had been seriously burned "some time in the past" compared with half of respondents in 1994 - it was worrying so many people still wanted a tan.

More than half those surveyed said they liked to get a tan but only a quarter had attempted to tan over the summer. Younger people were more likely to have tried to get a tan.

Ms Watts said it was also good to see more people were using sunscreen with an SPF30 - 60 per cent of sunscreen users compared with 35 per cent in 2000 - but she urged people to use sunscreen with other measures like hats, sunglasses and keeping out of the sun at peak times.

New Zealand's incidence of melanoma is about three times that of the United Kingdom and America.

About 45,000 new cases of skin cancer are reported every year, including about 1500 cases of melanoma, the type of skin cancer which makes up most deaths.

In 1999, 231 people died of melanoma, according to the most recent cancer registry statistics.