Using Caution While Basking in the Vermont Heat

Author: Sarah McCabe

"Welcome to Middlebury," the tour guides say — and how welcoming it is. Green grass abundant, the sun shining, the temperature hovering around 85 degrees with a slight breeze. "Yes, Middlebury!" the prospectives are thinking. "This is where I want to go."

Wait a minute, back up. Sun shining, 85 degrees? That's Florida, not Middlebury. Or is it? We've all checked Weather.com about 10 times a day just to make sure that we are typing in "Middlebury" correctly, and not, perhaps, hitting "Miami." We've all woken up to the sun burning our faces and grappled for the blinds to send us back into some darkness, confused as to where that blazing heat is coming from. And still, we've all come to the same conclusion: somehow summer found Middlebury.

And like a jet of Alaskan tourists dropped off in Jamaica for a week, we're running around with red faces and tomato-red streaks on our arms and chests. Presuming that those months of typically cold Vermont weather somehow justify the thought that, "Hey, for us, sunscreen is unnecessary," Middlebury College may quickly start churning out more skin cancer victims than University of Hawaii and Arizona combined.

"I was labeled the 'catch of the day,'" sunburn victim Devin Murphy '05 proclaimed, "I'm pretty embarrassed at how sunburned I got on April 18 in Vermont." The sun does not discriminate by age, sex, location, day of the year, whether you're out casually playing Ultimate or in a tank top or lying on Battell Beach.

"When you get a tan," Lotionbarn.com notes, "what is actually happening is the melanocytes are producing melanin pigment in reaction to ultraviolet rays in sunlight. Ultraviolet light stimulates melanin production … Melanin production takes a fair amount of time — that is why most people cannot get a tan in one day."

When we burn ourselves, "what we are really getting is cellular damage from ultraviolet radiation. The body responds to the damage with increased blood flow to the capillary bed of the dermis in order to bring in cells to repair the damage. The extra blood in the capillaries causes the redness and the dehydration associated with sunburn," the site continued.

This sunburn epidemic may be attributed to the fact that we simply could not count on five to seven days of great sun, knowing Vermont weather. We get two days of 90 degrees, and before you know it is 35 degrees again.

Not only was such a prediction of Vermont's flaky weather accurate, but Mother Nature spiced it up with an earthquake, too. So panicking over losing the sun, we flocked out during peak sun hours hoping to get lucky with perhaps a one or two day tan — and struck out with painful burns and very peculiar "farmer's tans."

Another Web site, Americansun.org gravely reminds us, "Over 1.3 million people will be diagnosed with skin cancer in the U.S. this year alone. It is the most common type of cancer in the United States and is one of only two types of cancer that continues to increase rather than decrease. Someone dies of melanoma every hour in the United States.

More ominously, melanoma can strike people of any age, race, gender and economic status. It is the most common cancer for women ages 25 to 29. In 1930, an American's lifetime risk of developing melanoma was one in 1500. Today, it is one in 75."

Not to turn everything towards such a sad topic on such lovely spring days, but sometimes the truth can be ugly. We have groups working to save the ozone on campus, and we have groups working to save the environment, but no groups are trying to save our skin. Instead, we must take this on as a personal responsibility. Most of us probably thought that we escaped this duty by enrolling in Middlebury, but those freckles and red blotches are here to remind you that the sun is everywhere, even in mountainous, and for the most part freezing, Vermont.

"Everyone made fun of me for lying out in the sun wearing SPF 45 with a sun hat and glasses," native Hawaiian Cortney Fritz '05 joked, "But I'm from Hawaii and we don't mess around with sun protection there. Hawaiians would be shocked to see so many sunscreen-less people on such sunny days. No one is laughing at me now, though!"

The American Cancer Society says, "Always use sunscreen with a Sun Protection Factor (SPF) of 15 or greater. For best results, apply sunscreen about 30 minutes before going outside to allow it time to bond with your skin.

In addition to protecting you from overexposure to sunlight, sunscreens also help to prevent other problems related to sun exposure including aging skin and precancerous growths."

But we all know that, right? Of course one would assume that we've heard enough of all this sun-protection hullabaloo, but judging from all the red faces walking around campus this week, maybe Vermonters and New Englanders could use a brief reminder.