Education

Lately, you may have heard various claims questioning the safety and effectiveness of sunscreen. Perhaps you heard that instead of protecting against melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, sunscreen actually causesthe disease, and that the chemicals in sunscreen are every bit as dangerous as the sun's ultraviolet (UV) rays. Here, we address some of those concerns.

Are the chemicals in sunscreen safe? I've heard about problems with oxybenzone, retinyl palmitate and...

The red in redheads' hair is thought to put them at increased risk of the dangerous skin cancer melanoma, even if they don't spend a lot of time in the sun, according to a new study.
Study co-author Dr. David Fisher and his research team first uncovered the apparent link between red hair pigment and melanoma last fall. That study used genetically altered mice that had been given a mutant gene that increased their risk of contracting the skin cancer.

Now the...