You're sciencing wrong: Sunscreen does not cause cancer (from I Fucking Love Science)

You might have seen an article going around Facebook and other places claiming that a recent major study has shown that wearing sunscreen can give you cancer. You might have been thinking, "Oh shit." Calm yourself. I had a moment of apprehension myself, before I took a closer look. (Or you might have been thinking from the beginning, "That's bullshit," in which case, yes, very good, you're very smart and special.)

This post from I Fucking Love Science (brilliant blog name, obviously) debunks the scaremongering anti-sunscreen bullshit. There's lots of good stuff in there, but this is one of the most important parts, I think:

"The claim that more people who use sunscreen develop melanoma is based on a study that tracked sun exposure and sunscreen use in nearly 1500 people over a span of two years. The results did show that those who used sunscreen were more likely to develop melanoma, but there was a massive caveat left out of RF’s article. The median sun protection factor (SPF) was 6 (the CDC recommends SPF 15 or higher) and those who used sunscreen the most spent considerably more time in the sun than those who rarely use sunscreen.
RF’s implication that sunscreen is causing the melanoma is dead wrong; the paper itself states “sunscreen use, by permitting more time sunbathing, is associated with melanoma occurrence,” particularly when using sunscreen with a low SPF that isn’t as protective." 

Correlation is not causation and all that. People wore low SPF sunscreen, felt like that meant they could sunbathe longer, and ended up with melanoma. The sunscreen did not cause the melanoma. Sigh. It's a typical misreading of what some scientific study actually says.

Yes, you need Vitamin D. You can get that from the sun. You can also get it in your diet. If you want to get it from the sun, you don't need to spend a ton of time baking to get what you need. The epidemiologist in this article says that pale people (like me) only need a few minutes of sun exposure a day, tan/medium skin tones could use 15-20 minutes, and people with dark skin tones need quite a bit more, maybe 6 times as much as the pale people (6 x "a few" = 18 to 24 minutes?). It all depends on how much clothing you're wearing, what time of day it is, etc. Still, that does not mean never wear sunscreen. I mean, if you don't want to, it's your call. Not everyone has the same risk for skin cancer, and not everyone cares about their skin showing the ominous "signs of aging", and that's cool. But don't avoid sunscreen because you think it's cancerous. Personally, I always wear it on my face and neck, because if I'm going to be pasty anyway, I might as well try to avoid skin damage. But I don't wear it on other parts of my body on a regular basis - only when I'm going to be in the sun for more than 20 minutes at a time. I'll get my Vitamin D walking to the market or whatever.

Anyway, you're all smart people and you didn't need me to tell you all this, but sometimes it's nice to have a link like this IFLS one to paste into the comments of your annoying cousin's Facebook status about how he's been right all along not to wear sunscreen because all the rest of you are going to get cancer and he's not, see? SHEEPLE.