No such thing as a healthy tan, so slap on eight teaspoons of sunscreen to be safe

THERE is no such thing as a safe tan, according to new NHS advice that urges the public to apply eight teaspoons of sunscreen whenever the sun comes out.

The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (Nice) said anyone out in strong sunlight for more than a short time should protect exposed skin using cream with an SPF of 15 or more.

Health watchdogs said people needed to get some sunshine in order to build up vitamin D levels – warning that almost one in four people is currently deficient. Officials said short bursts of sunshine – with lotion applied whenever there is a chance of skin reddening – were the safest way to build bone strength while protecting against skin cancer.

The new guidance says the public needs to “balance” the risks and benefits of sun exposure.

“There is no safe or healthy way to get a tan from sunlight,” the watchdog said. It urges people to refrain from complementing a “healthy tan” or talking about the benefits of “escaping to the sun”.

The guidance follows a study which shows a 40 per cent rise in NHS hospital admissions for skin cancer, which is now the fifth most common type of cancer in the UK.

Experts say a boom in cheap overseas travel and a fashion for tanned skin have fuelled the rise.

The guidance suggests people need to go further to protect themselves against skin cancer, applying sunscreen “liberally” – with up to eight teaspoons at a time and “frequently”.

Anyone going out in the sun long enough to risk burning should put cream on twice, they say – once half an hour before going out, and again, when reaching the outdoors.

For millennia, men and women have existed on the Earth courtesy of the life-giving properties of our neighbourhood star without needing to be told by officialdom that too much sun is bad for them. In recent years, advice about covering up, wearing a hat and applying sunscreen has become commonplace, partly as a result of an increase in skin cancers linked to sunburn.

These have become increasingly prevalent as more people travel overseas to climates where they are unused to the intensity of the sun. A friendly reminder of the dangers of excessive exposure seems perfectly reasonable in such cases. But what are we to make of the latest public guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence? It has decreed that no suntan is safe and that whenever anyone ventures outside on a sunny day, they should apply eight teaspoons of suntan lotion.

As with the recent report from the Chief Medical Officer which recommended that the only safe level of alcohol consumption is abstinence, people will simply not take seriously advice that they know to be preposterous and that defies common sense. We are not allowed any “escape to the sun”, apparently.

In this high-latitude country currently ravaged by Imogen, the latest in an alphabet soup of named storms, the prospect of even seeing the sun, let alone being burned by it, is remote. People need sunshine to produce vitamin D, without which they can develop rickets (which is on the rise in this country). More dangerously still, this sort of alarmist health nonsense will encourage people to close their ears to level-headed and practical counsel that really should be heeded.