This little beach is actually Akapesket Beach in East Falmouth. It’s a short walk from our house. Living here gives us “beach rights.” What that means is that each summer we can pay a fee (like $125) to the “Akapesket Improvement Association” and get little tags, and get by the beach gestapo (actually, a nice lady hired for the summer by the fees we pay, her job being to make sure nobody who is not authorized uses this beach, in real life she’s a school teacher–she takes her Beach Police role quite seriously). Cape Cod is big on “private” beaches, and “association” beaches. They have a mortal fear here that some interloper will absorb sunlight meant for them, or gaze upon an ocean view reserved for their eyes, or enjoy the cool waters meant to ease their suffering from the terrible heat (it occasionally gets into the 80s!).

But I’m not here to wax wroth over the usurpation of the nation’s beaches by selfish people (of whom, alas, I become one by joining the Akapesket Improvement Association–”improvement” in this case being pretty much restricted to, er, restricting the beach as noted above). No, I’m here to talk about the mortal risk everyone takes by going to the beach. Death awaits you there! We are talking here, of course, about sun exposure (suitable grim background music plays).

I have mentioned this subject before, in my Blogger Blog, but I cannot resist coming back to it, as the “news” articles about it continue to proliferate. Even Sanjay Gupta has gotten into the act. Here’s the gist of it: 1) sun exposure can damage skin cells; 2) sunlight-induced damage to skin cells can cause changes which may become cancerous; 3) some people die of skin cancer, particularly malignant melanoma. Here’s the reporting: “Use sunscreen, cover your body with tightly-woven cloth, sunlight can lead to skin cancer and people die of skin cancer.” Did I say “use” sunscreen? Maybe what I meant was “buy” sunscreen. The companies which make and sell sunscreen products are advertisers (or potentially so). Sunscreen products are a 72 Trillion dollar a year business (well, it’s some large number!). Note: there is no definitive evidence that using sunscreen prevents skin cancer.

My astute readers will have noticed that my parody of the reporting about this partakes of the same flaw as the reporting itself–No Direct Statement That Sunlight Can Cause Malignant Melanoma Or Cause Death. Hmmm, they urge us to spend money, to cover up our bodies, and they tell us half-truths. Aha! (You say) We’ve caught you, Mr. Twoblueday! You are too stupid to know that being alarmist is just their way of protecting us! How would they feel if they failed to imply that the sun could kill us, and we used our own judgment, and then the sun did kill us!!! They’d feel just awful. Maybe somebody would sue them!!! Note: there is no direct evidence that using sunscreen prevents skin cancer–oh, I already said that.
Usually, but thankfully not always, the media fail to report that the ingredients in sunscreens may in fact be inimical to our health. They usually fail to mention that sunblocks prevent our skin from naturally making Vitamin D (oh, sure, we can spend even more money buying supplements!). Anyway, I’m gonna write to Sanjay Gupta (he has a blog or something), and inquire about actual hard numbers on worldwide (or any-wide) deaths from sunlight, hard numbers about developing malignant melanoma from sunlight. Maybe he’ll write back and give me hard data, and I’ll have to eat crow. Maybe.

By the way, my skin burns easily, I hate sunburns, and for my own comfort I use suncreens (and never just lay about in the sun like a beached whale). Did I mention there is no definitive evidence that using sunscreen prevents skin cancer?