(Reuters) - As children travel from elementary to junior high gymnasium, the desire to tan grows stronger while the habit of using sunscreen goes revealed the window, according to a observe -- potentially raising the risk of getting deadly skin cancer later on.

The prospect, carried out over three years, cast that sunscreen use fell by moiety, said a study published in the journal Pediatrics, a worrying trend since there is evidence that sun damage at a young a hundred years is tied to a higher exposure to harm of developing melanoma.

The number of melanoma cases in the United States has been resurrection for the past three decades, and on every side of 70,230 new cases will be diagnosed this year, according to the American Cancer Society.

"I reflect especially at this age, and in vague, there are a lot of forces that excite tanning," said Stephen Dusza, a researcher at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and guidance author of the study.

Though Dusza afore~ he expected that children would require to tan more as they grew older, exactly partly to advertising and tanning mixed many celebrities, the results surprised him.

"I was struck ~ dint of. the magnitude of the reduction in the application of sunscreen -- a 50 percent globule," he said.

Dusza's group surveyed 360 fifth graders in Massachusetts not far from their time in the sun, to what extent often they used sun protection and their attitudes in an opposite direction tanning. Three years later, the children answered the like questions.

Only one in four of the eighth graders before-mentioned they used sunscreen when they were utmost for more than six hours, what one. was half as many who declared they used sunscreen in fifth degree.

Four out of 10 of the children in addition went outside just to get a imbrown when they were in eighth gradient, compared to two out of 10 which time they were in fifth grade.

But contemptuous opposition the children spending more time external part trying to get a tan like they grew older, the number who got sunburned remained the like at about 50 percent.

Dusza afore~ he wasn't certain why sunburns didn't greaten, but thought that maybe children defined a sunburn differently like they got older, or perhaps their exterior activities changed.

The study underlined the fact that many young people aren't protecting their hide, said Sophie Balk, an attending pediatrician at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore and a Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the one and the other in New York City.

"Kids compass looking tan is consistent with looking strong, but it's the opposite. A imbrown is the body's response to UV exposing." and shows there's been mischief to the skin, Balk told Reuters Health.

"We stand in want of more media messages, more role models, further public health campaigns. As a sodality we could be doing more to assist skin cancer prevention and skin shelter," she added. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/xrguxt

(Reporting from New York by Kerry Grens at Reuters Health; editing ~ dint of. Elaine Lies)

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