[mhotchen]

I think about this often. I hear people talking about why we need sunscreen these days and in my mind it's simply due to the lack of foliage and natural shade in both modern urban and rural areas (which are largely farm land these days)

[infecto]

Wouldn’t the simpler explanation be that we are more aware of the risks to over exposure to the sun? We certainly can use more trees but most folks spend most of their time indoors for work.

[ghaff]

In general, perhaps especially in the US, a lot of people are more inclined to mitigate all kinds of risks today than they were a few decades ago. See also seat belts, helmets, etc. Per another comment though I don't see any evidence that extends to not even going outside and, while my dermatologist is 100% on-board with sunscreen and hats, she's never even hinted that I might spend less time outside,

[bluGill]

No doctor tells you to never go outside in normal situations. If there are high pollution or severe weather events they will tell you stay inside for the duration. I'm sure there are others, but they are not common so it doesn't matter that I can't think of them.

However many people only go outside in the context of walking from their car to the door of wherever they are going, and some who work from home can go for weeks without going outside at all. This is a bad thing, you need exercise (though it could be inside), but realistically many people are not getting enough.

[ghaff]

Certainly, and especially outside of an urban environment, walking any real amount takes a degree of intentionality that is easy to put off.

[wongarsu]

Depends on what you mean by "these days". If you ask "why do white people need sunscreen" a large part of the reason is that we evolved this skin tone in a Europe that was completely covered in forest until agriculture became widespread. If you ask "why do people wear more sunscreen than in the 50s" the answer is risk awareness. And especially in the last 10 years a much bigger awareness of the effects of skin aging.

[sorenjan]

Europeans developed light skin after the agriculturar revolution, not before.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2467926-most-europeans-...

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.29.635495v2....

[WaitWaitWha]

No.

"The peoples of Europe are fair-skinned and reddish, because they live in a cold climate and are not scorched by the sun."

Source: Hippocrates, On Airs, Waters, and Places, 5th century BC.

"The physical characteristics of the Germans are consistent: blue eyes, reddish hair, and large bodies."

(Tacitus, Germania, chapter 4)

Egyptian tomb paintings from the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC) visually represent foreign peoples with distinct skin tones - "Europeans", in the form of Sea Peoples or early Aegean peoples (e.g., Minoans or Mycenaeans), were sometimes shown with light red or pale skin tones.

[fwip]

The agricultural revolution was roughly 10,000 BC, wasn't it? Your sources are more recent than that, and so don't disagree with the point the parent post was making.

[wongarsu]

According to [1] more like 6000-4000 BC for Europe. Granted, that's still before 1700BC.

From a cursory study of Wikipedia my rough summary would be: Europe used to be roughly divided in the "Western Hunter Gatherers" (WHG) and "Eastern Hunter Gatherers" (EHG). The WHG typically had dark skin, dark hair and blue eyes, the EHG were typically light skinned with brown eyes. Blond hair may have originated from EHGs in North Eurasia and spread from there. Around 6000 BC farmers from Anatolia (~modern Turkey) started moving into Europe, the EEF (Early European Farmers). Those were typically smaller than European hunter-gatherers, light skinned and dark haired. They migrated North, partially replacing the EHG and WHG, partially mixing with them, and in some places the EHG and WHG simply took up farming. But Easter Europe is less amenable to farming, meaning the dark-skinned WHG diminished the most while the light-skinned EHG and EEF became the dominant groups in Europe's genetic diversity

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_European_Farmers#/media/...

[WaitWaitWha]

Yes, there was an agricultural revolution during the neolithic times. We have evidence this for the Southwest Asia aka Middle East, Asia around the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, South, Central and North Americas.

I am open to this hypothesis (conjecture?), it just lacks supportive evidence. On the other hand, we have ample evidence that agricultural revolution did not "turn people white" in the other regions.

[codr7]

Also, no one was selling sunscreen back then.

That all started in the seventies when skin cancer was invented.

[wodenokoto]

It is. Sunscreen recommendations usually also applies if you plan on staying in shade. UV (like visible light) reflects off of walls too.

[ricw]

It’s actually much more that the ozone layer, which filters uv, is much thinner than it was even 60-70 years ago. The ozone layer might be growing again, but at a very slow pace.

Simple fact is, we’re much more exposed to uv than prior generations.

[dgacmu]

"much" more might be overstating it? We get about 6% more UV:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100316142529.h...

Which corresponds with the ozone layer being about 5% thinner:

https://www.clo.nl/en/indicators/en021819-ozone-layer-1980-2...

Not good (or good for us) but also not a huge huge change, since we stopped the thinning of the ozone layer mostly in time.

[roflmaostc]

actually the reflectance of UV is usually much lower than visible light.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-01315-1/figures/2

[ekianjo]

People are moke likely to cover themselves too much and refrain from going outside which in turns makes them vitamin D deficient which is way worse than potential UV induced cancer risks

[andra_nl]

Can you support this claim somehow? Because on the face of it this sounds dangerously wrong.

[jodrellblank]

This dietician blog on the British Heart Foundation website suggests it's wrong but partly right[0], saying "although having low levels of vitamin D is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, the low vitamin D is a result of lifestyle factors that increase your risk of heart disease and stroke, rather than the cause of increased risk.".

The leading causes of death in the UK[1] are heart disease, lung cancer, influenza, dementia, vascular disease (stroke?) and lower respiratory disease. Skin cancer is 1% of cancer deaths, and for melanoma the peak of diagnosis is people 85-89 years old[2]. Considering average life expectancy, people are generally diagnosed with skin cancer a few years after they die.

The partial claim "refrain from going outside which in turn .. is way worse than potential UV induced cancer risks" could be right. Avoiding exercise and increasing your heart disease risk, in the hope that you'll avoid one of the more treatable and less fatal cancers in very late life, is probably the wrong tradeoff. Not to do with Vitamin D or covering up or suncream though. Still, why not do both - cover up and go out, lower heart disease risk and lower your chances of skin cancer diagnosis in late life.

[0] https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-maga...

[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...

[2] https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/melanoma/background-informati...

[ekianjo]

How many people have you heard dying of skin cancer vs other cancers around you? High Vitamin D levels have shown over and over again to decrease the risk of serious cancers (the littérature is abundant).

Melanoma causes 1.5 % of total cancers related deaths according to CDC so you are much more likely to die from all the other types of cancer. https://gis.cdc.gov/Cancer/USCS/#/Trends/

[pjc50]

Also the 20th century abandonment of the hat.

(remind me, what was the California "bus shelter" design that was basically an expensive stick and got widely ridiculed on here?)

[huhkerrf]

It was called La Sombrita: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Sombrita

And, it's even worse than just not working. It's a shelter to provide shade _for women_ that provided almost none. Because apparently shade is now part of the gender wars.

[fwip]

As somebody who took daily bus trips for nearly a decade of my life, I would definitely prefer the meager shade from these to the bare bus stops they were replacing. Standing in the sun for even fifteen minutes waiting for a bus can be miserable.

I'm not sure what your point about "gender wars" is. Is this pole too effeminate for a man to be shaded by?

[RunningDroid]

> I'm not sure what your point about "gender wars" is. Is this pole too effeminate for a man to be shaded by?

They were referring to this: >Its purpose was to assist female bus riders by offering shade during the hottest hours of the day and providing sidewalk lighting at night.

[fwip]

Right - a study found that the majority of bus riders were women, but previous designers were mostly men. So they surveyed them, found out that one of their top priorities was shade, and designed a relatively inexpensive way to provide it.

No gender war, just serving your customers.

[huhkerrf]

> I'm not sure what your point about "gender wars" is. Is this pole too effeminate for a man to be shaded by?

TFA address this: "Its purpose was to assist female bus riders by offering shade during the hottest hours of the day and providing sidewalk lighting at night."

[jollyllama]

"La Sombrita"

[stefs]

imo: people used to be outside a lot more. by summer they usually had a good tan, so they didn't suffer the sunlight that much. of course this did lead to _premature_ (from our modern point of view) skin aging.

heat and light are different factors, even though they mostly come hand in hand. outside, heat is definitely a bigger problem than it used to be, but also we don't spend as much time outside. if heat became a problem people used to take time off, rest during the hottest times of the day and work earlier/later.

[npteljes]

>why we need sunscreen these days

It's not about foliage, it's because we like to look as young as possible - or put another way, as undamaged as possible. Sunscreen adds to that a lot, because it mitigates sun damage. At a given age, people used to look much older than we do now, and that is partly because of less sun exposure.