Researchers browsing through the cases of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, found that its rates have risen 50 percent among young women in the United States since 1980, a trend that might have to do with the use of tanning salons and exposure to the sun’s damaging rays. Melanoma rates have remained steady among young men, the report found.

According to the American Academy of Dermatology, more than 1 million new cases of skin cancer are diagnosed each year. About 62,480 people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with melanoma in 2008, the most deadly type of skin cancer. Also, about 11,200 people will die of skin cancer this year although its rate of survival is of 95 percent when caught early. According to the Skin Cancer Foundation, about 90 percent of non-melanoma skin cancers are linked to exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the sun.

Mark Purdue, a researcher at the National Cancer Institute’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology & Genetics and lead author along with his colleagues analyzed more than 20,000 cases of melanoma in young adults ages 15 to 39 from 1973 to 2004. The cases were reported to the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Result program, a database maintained by the National Cancer Institute.

The study found “a 50 percent increase in the annual incidence of melanoma among young adult Caucasian women between 1980 and 2004,” which clearly shows that public educational campaigns to educate Americans about the risks they expose when practicing indoor or outdoor tanning “do not appear to have resulted in a reduction in melanoma rates among young women,” Purdue said.

Rates of melanoma cases for young men rose from 4.7 cases per 100,000 per year in 1973 to 7.7 per 100,000 per year in 1980, but it then stopped rising. What exactly led to these results, the researchers don’t know for sure.

The study also found an increasing trend for thicker and later-stage melanomas, suggesting that the increase is not the result of better reporting of the disease.

All in all, these higher rates should be taken as a warning sign by the young women who often disregard doctors’ advice for the sake of beauty.

Young women and not only are urged to generously apply water-resistant sunscreen with an SPF of 15 or higher that protects against both UVA and UVB rays. The lotion should be applied 20 or 30 minutes before going out in the sun on the places more exposed to the sun's rays, such as face, neck, ears, lower legs, feet and hands.

Doctors also recommend people avoid exposure to the sun between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. when the sun’s rays are most intense. Also, people should wear protective clothing and cover as much of their skin, and wear a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses.

Moreover, people should routinely examine anything suspicious, like changes in size, shape or color of an existing mole or skin growth or the appearance of a new growth on the skin or bleeding on your skin.

“Checking yourself and others can save someone’s life,” Dr. Jeffrey C. Salomon, an assistant clinical professor of plastic surgery at Yale University School of Medicine told Forbes.

For more information on the negative effects of sun’s rays on their skin, people should visit www.skincancer.org, www.cancer.org, or the American Academy of Dermatology’s Web site at www.aad.org.