By Lisa Rapaport | HEALTH NEWS |
Offering free sunscreen to people at public events might not be enough to motivate them to properly protect themselves from harmful rays, a recent experiment suggests.
Researchers set up complimentary sunscreen dispensers at 10 information booths at the Minnesota State Fair, which typically draws more than 1.7 million attendees each August.
About 17,000 people used the free sunscreen. The researchers observed 2,187 sunscreen users and found just 33 percent of them applied it to all sun-exposed areas of their skin.
“Unfortunately, for many people, sun protection is not a priority,” said senior study author Dr. Ingrid Polcari of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
“All exposed skin should be protected from the sun, either with clothes or with sunscreen,” Polcari said by email.
When people at the fair didn’t use enough sunscreen, about half of them covered their upper arms and roughly 42 percent applied it to their face, researchers report in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. Very few of them applied sunscreen on their chest or legs.
