If you have outdoor workers, you’re probably aware of the need to protect them against heat illness during the summer months. After all, more than 30 American workers die each year of heat-related illnesses. But heat-related illness is not the only deadly condition that can result from working outdoors. Skin cancer is far more common, and far more deadly, than heat-related illness. Are you doing what you can to protect your outdoor workers from the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United States?
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Highlighting Skin Cancer
According to the Skin Cancer Foundation, approximately 87,000 new cases of skin cancer will be diagnosed in the United States in 2017—more than the total of new breast, colon, lung, and prostate cancer diagnoses combined. Most cases are basal cell carcinomas or squamous cell carcinomas (two types of cancer that are rarely life-threatening). Fewer than 1% of skin cancers are melanomas, but it is by far the deadliest type, killing nearly 10,000 people each year. About two-thirds of victims (more than 6,300 each year) are men, and about one-third (about 3,300 each year) are women.
Why does this matter to employers with outdoor workers? More than 8 out of 10 cases of melanoma, and 9 out of 10 cases of all other types of skin cancer, are attributable to a single cause: exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun. Unfortunately, surveys and studies have revealed that employers of outdoor workers don’t seem especially concerned about it and aren’t taking positive steps to reduce workers’ risk.
Leaving Protection to Chance
Perhaps because occupational exposures are difficult to tease out from workers’ trips to the beach, household yard work, and tanning bed exposures, employers don’t seem to take skin cancer prevention very seriously. A 2016 survey of adults who spend at least half of their working hours outdoors found that 58% of those workers feel that they do need to wear sunscreen on the job, although only 18% routinely wore sunscreen at work. More than 70% said that their employers do not provide sunscreen, so those who do wear it tend to bring their own.
A study published in the journal JAMA Dermatology in 2016 found that sun-safety policies for outdoor municipal workers in Colorado (including police, firefighters, road crews, sanitation workers, and parks employees) generally required workers to wear protective clothing, including hats and sunglasses, but fewer than 10% explicitly stated that protection from sun exposure was the goal. Only 16% of the municipalities studied included sunscreen in their policies.
Fortunately, this is a safety program improvement that’s straightforward and inexpensive to address. Tomorrow we’ll look at how to assess and minimize workers’ exposure—and their skin cancer risk.