I would note that 2/3+ of Australians will be diagnosed with skin cancer in their life time, compared to ~1/5 of Americans. I think the lesson is that “if you’re White, live somewhere with a lot of sun, and spend a lot of time outdoors without mitigation, you’ll probably get skin cancer”. Note that many Australians aren’t White, or spend a normal amount of time in the sun, so constantly getting sunburned is probably even worse than the 2⁄3 statistic implies.
This is almost certainly due to Australian behavior being an outlier, since Whites in equally sunny places like Arizona have relatively normal skin cancer rates.
Survival rates are like, 95%+ for skin cancer in general, so I wouldn’t be too concerned about it. Then again, I’m Asian and tan (too) well, so I’m biased.
Australia (and especially Northern Australia) seems to have more ultraviolet radiation. I don’t think it’s behavioral. Arizona does not have equal ultraviolet radiation.
That’s a really good point. The Nordics and South African Whites also have pretty high skin cancer rates, so maybe it’s “fair skin (especially gingers?) is bad”, “high UV bad inversely proportional to melanin”, and the result is “gingers in Australia will probaby get cancer”.
But also, obviously behavior has to play a role, since Solar UV hitting light skin is the direct cause of the vast majority of skin cancer, even in other races.
I would note that 2/3+ of Australians will be diagnosed with skin cancer in their life time, compared to ~1/5 of Americans. I think the lesson is that “if you’re White, live somewhere with a lot of sun, and spend a lot of time outdoors without mitigation, you’ll probably get skin cancer”. Note that many Australians aren’t White, or spend a normal amount of time in the sun, so constantly getting sunburned is probably even worse than the 2⁄3 statistic implies.
This is almost certainly due to Australian behavior being an outlier, since Whites in equally sunny places like Arizona have relatively normal skin cancer rates.
Survival rates are like, 95%+ for skin cancer in general, so I wouldn’t be too concerned about it. Then again, I’m Asian and tan (too) well, so I’m biased.
Australia (and especially Northern Australia) seems to have more ultraviolet radiation. I don’t think it’s behavioral. Arizona does not have equal ultraviolet radiation.
That’s a really good point. The Nordics and South African Whites also have pretty high skin cancer rates, so maybe it’s “fair skin (especially gingers?) is bad”, “high UV bad inversely proportional to melanin”, and the result is “gingers in Australia will probaby get cancer”.
But also, obviously behavior has to play a role, since Solar UV hitting light skin is the direct cause of the vast majority of skin cancer, even in other races.
For behavior to be the cause of why Australian have more skin cancer, they would need to behave differently.
I’m not aware of anyone having documented that Australian behave significantly differently.