The young woman in the American Cancer Society advertisement holds up a photograph of a smiling blonde. “My sister accidentally killed herself. She died of skin cancer,” reads the headline.

The public service announcement, financed by the sunscreen maker Neutrogena, is running in 15 women’s magazines this summer. It warns readers that “left unchecked, skin cancer can be fatal,” and urges them to “use sunscreen, cover up and watch for skin changes.”

Read the rest of this article: NY Times

84% of sunscreen products are harmful to health, says alarming EWG study

For 29 years, the FDA has refused to publish safety standards for sunscreen products. That’s nearly three decades of keeping the public in the dark about the extremely harmful, cancer-causing chemicals found in sunscreen products.

Read the rest of this article: Natural News

New Study Shows Vitamin D Could Prevent 60 Percent of Cancers

A landmark study on vitamin D – a first-ever clinical trial showing the people with healthy vitamin D levels have 60 percent fewer cancers – will be published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition next month.

The Toronto Globe & Mail – one of Canada’s most-read media points – broke the story last weekend in a front-page report.

“Perhaps the biggest bombshell about vitamin D’s effects is about to go off. In June, U.S. researchers will announce the first direct link between cancer prevention and the sunshine vitamin. Their results are nothing short of astounding,” the Globe & Mail reported. “A four-year clinical trial involving 1,200 women found those taking the vitamin had about a 60-per-cent reduction in cancer incidence, compared with those who didn’t take it, a drop so large — twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking — it almost looks like a typographical error.”

The story continued, “Those studying the vitamin say the hide-from-sunlight advice has amounted to the health equivalent of a foolish poker trade. Anyone practicing sun avoidance has traded the benefit of a reduced risk of skin cancer - which is easy to detect and treat and seldom fatal - for an increased risk of the scary, high-body-count cancers, such as breast, prostate and colon, that appear linked to vitamin D shortages.”

“The sun advice has been misguided information ‘of just breathtaking proportions,’ said John Cannell, head of the Vitamin D Council, a non-profit, California-based organization. ‘Fifteen hundred Americans die every year from [skin cancers]. Fifteen hundred Americans die every day from the serious cancers.’”

Vitamin D casts cancer prevention in new light - See full text of the Globe & Mail story.

According to a new theory, sealing our skins off from the sun may cause more cancer deaths than it prevents.

Read the rest of this article: Harvard Magazine