Parents of sunburnt children \’should be referred to social services\’
Children who get severely sunburnt should be referred to social services, according to campaigners.
A very, very, serious problem.
\”It\’s very serious. These parents have tripled their children\’s chances of getting skin cancer.
\”Malignant melanoma is the most common cancer in young adults aged 15-34 in the UK and it happens from getting sunburnt.
\”We also need to make sure schools are protecting children from sunburn while they are there. As far as I\’m concerned it is a child protection issue.
\”It\’s not sexual abuse and you\’re not hurting them there and then but you\’re making their vaccination programmes and the money spent on their education pointless if they get melanoma and die from it.”
Pat Wade, founder of charity Burned Children\’s Club, failing to put on sunscreen is neglect.
\”The agony these children can suffer is horrendous.
\”With all the advice out there children should not be getting burned. It\’s neglect.
\”In effect you\’re abusing that child because you\’re not looking after it properly.
\”You can buy sun cream for as little as £1 a bottle. Even if you don\’t have a lot of money you should be able to protect your child.
\”If a child comes into an A&E ward after abuse you phone social services.\”
Total number of deaths per year in the UK from melanoma is 2,200. That\’s people of all ages.
We might be seeing the interesting spectacle of people with a bee in their bonnet getting press coverage here.
Especially since we\’re also seeing cases of rickets as a result of too much sunscreen being slapped on the little darlin\’s.
Just checking, but are these the same social services only too happy to leave children in squalid, dangerous homes with admitted drunks and drug-addicted parents, or slutmum’s latest sperm donor?
Yes, the worst thing about children dying is all that wasted education.
Not to mention that it is at least possible that compounds in most sunscreens are also implicated in Melanoma. Not proven, but there is correlation.
It’s not sexual abuse…
I’m glad we’ve got that cleared up.
I blame global warming.
Ed Snack – the correlation is most likely that people who use suncream are more likely to be overexposed to the sun.
However, what most annoyed me about the article was the references to lung cancer – 35,000 deaths – and melanoma – 2000 deaths (and in news this morning – 8/10 malignent melanomas don’t result in death).
Burned Children’s Club site does not say how much money they get and from who. In such circumstances the default assumption must be that they are a state funded sock puppet, scaremongering to enhance state power, like almost all the other “charities” that get media coverage.
If Fatcher hadn’t sold every school playing field in England then kids wouldn’t be running around outdoors enjoying themselves and catching cancer from Tory policies, er, die Tory scum, fight the cuts, etc.
Another single-issue numpty with a bee in his bonnet!
The website to which you link says that around half of those dying from malignant melanoma are under 70 years of age, Only 27% of those diagnosed are under 55.
So where are the screams of anguish over children allowing parents to go out into the garden without sunscreen?
The charts show that the frequency of skin melanoma has soared since parents started buying and applying sunscreen while the frequency of kids getting sunburnt playing cricket or fishing or swimming or … has declined.
Doesn’t it humble you, folk had to bang out & raise kids for close on a million years, waiting for the medical professionals & social workers to tell them how it should be done? Mystery any survived.
I want someone to set up an anti-rickets charity and go head-to-head with these people. Might as well, in the name of ‘balance’…
One tiny point, there is no scientific evidence linking over exposure to the Sun with melanoma.
Were it so, one would expect most melanomas to occur on parts of the body most exposed to the Sun: face, neck, hands, wrists, arms, legs, but in fact they do not and appear in areas such as the trunk more often covered… even on the soles of the feet.
But let not evidence stand in the way of anecdote, people with a living to make, a cause to promote, a doom to say, a research paper to write and get on the cv… look at global warming for example.
Burned Children’s Club seem to be run by the British Burn Association, whose accounts can be found here:
http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/find-charities/
They mostly seem to run courses on sunburn and avoiding it. I don’t like New Labour’s politicisation of the charity sector, but it seems a little much to call them sock-puppets, in this case.
Applying sun cream does not protect against getting melanoma.
even on the soles of the feet.
Ah, but only on the feet of Essex girls.
I thought the rise in rickets was partially attributable to the rise in women wandering around dressed like mobile pup tents, but I could be wrong I suppose.
What do us whites in Australia do?
Lots of sun damage and yet to everybodies annoyance we ae living longer.
Unless you look for it.
@ PaulB
Thanks – good link
That also explains the higher level of melanoma on areas not usually exposed to the sun. Which fits with skin colouration being related to the amount of sunshine received in the area where the population had resided for a few centuries/millennia.
I am old, lazy and overweight but most of my sports injuries are sunburn because training for a marathon usually means running for an hour or two or three outside working hours when the sun is low but the actual race requires three to four hours including peak sunlight and I cannot stop every half-hour or hour to be resprayed with suncream.
john77: you’re welcome.
Off topic, but do you run marathons in the summer?
@ PaulB
I haven’t actually run one for half-a-dozen years which is part of the reason I’m overweight but when I did some were summer some were winter, London were Spring.