00:02The sun's out and people are prepared.
00:04Sunscreen's definitely important. I wear it every single day.
00:07All the time. 50 plus.
00:09When you're going out in the sun all day, definitely sunscreen.
00:12Doesn't matter what time of year it is.
00:13Researchers say skin cancer is taking a financial toll on taxpayers.
00:18This is a wake-up call. We are spending far too much on treating a preventable cancer.
00:23A new study tracked more than 40,000 Queenslanders aged between 40 and 69 for eight years.
00:32The participants underwent about 245,000 skin cancer procedures, costing taxpayers more than $43 million.
00:42When we combine costs for melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers, it's the highest costing cancer in Australia.
00:48And so we were actually able to identify that these high costs exist in just a cohort of individuals within
00:55Queensland.
00:55Researchers estimate Queenslanders in midlife undergo 1.5 million procedures every year, based on the findings and the state's population.
01:06If you extrapolate that up to the Queensland population, it's hundreds of millions of dollars a year spent on treating
01:12skin cancers.
01:13In a separate landmark study, researchers found in a test group of around 50 people aged 18 to 55, even
01:22low levels of exposure to ultraviolet rays could cause damage.
01:26What we saw was that we saw damage to the DNA, the genetic material in the cell.
01:31Researchers saying both studies only reinforcing the need for more prevention campaigns.
01:36There are
01:42You
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