Skin Cancer Risks

A risk factor is a behavior or characteristic that increases someone's chance of developing a disease.

Risk factors for melanoma skin cancer:

• Exposure to the sun or artificial sunlight in tanning booths. If you work outdoors, play outdoor sports, or otherwise spend lots of time outdoors, your skin cancer risk is increased.
• Family or personal history of melanoma.
• Fair skin and blue eyes. Tendency to sunburn easily and develop freckles after sun exposure.
• History of sunburns early in life, especially people who have had at least one severe, blistering sunburn as a child or teenager.
• Unusual moles or a large number of moles.

Risk factors for non-melanoma skin cancer (basal cell and squamous cell cancers) are:

• Exposure to a lot of sun or artificial sunlight.
• Fair skin.
• Scars or burns on the skin.
• Having chronic skin inflammation or skin ulcers.
• Being exposed to arsenic, a chemical used in some pesticides and chemotherapy.
• Radiation therapy.
• Taking immunosuppressive drugs.
• Actinic keratosis. These are thick scaly patches of skin that can sometime develop into cancer.

More on Skin Cancer

This article was reviewed and updated June 2007.