Skin Cancer & Melanoma Awareness Month: A Calm Look at Your Skin

What May is actually for

Skin Cancer and Melanoma Awareness Month runs each May. Skin is the one organ you can inspect yourself, without equipment, in a few minutes. That makes this observance unusually practical, and it makes precision about the evidence matter more, not less.

Two families of skin cancer

Skin cancer starts in the tissues of the skin, the body's largest organ.

The most common group is nonmelanoma skin cancer, which covers basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. NCI notes these are the most common type and can usually be cured.

Melanoma is the other. It starts in melanocytes, the cells that make pigment. It is far less common, but much more likely to invade nearby tissue and spread to the lung, liver, bone or brain. Most deaths from skin cancer come from melanoma.

Melanoma can develop from an existing mole or from a dysplastic nevus, an unusual mole. More often it develops in apparently normal skin. It can also occur in the eye, under a nail and elsewhere.

Where it tends to appear, and in whom

In men, melanoma is often found on the head, neck or back. In women, on the back or the lower legs.

Skin tone changes both risk and pattern. NCI reports that in 2017 to 2018 the lifetime risk of a melanoma diagnosis was 2.9 percent, about 1 in 34, for White people; 0.1 percent, about 1 in 1,000, for Black people; and 0.5 percent, about 1 in 200, for Hispanic people.

But people with darker skin tend to be diagnosed at a more advanced stage, and advanced melanoma is harder to control. In darker skin, melanoma is typically found under the fingernails or toenails, often first as a pigmented streak in the nail, or on the palms of the hands or the soles of the feet. Those are the places to look.

When to get checked

The first sign of melanoma is often a change in the shape, color, size or feel of an existing mole, or a new colored or unusual patch of skin. NCI's ABCDE rule describes early melanoma:

• Asymmetry. One half does not match the other.
• Border. The edges are ragged, notched or blurred, and pigment may spread into surrounding skin.
• Color. Shades of black, brown and tan may appear together, sometimes with white, gray, red, pink or blue.
• Diameter. There is a change in size, usually an increase. Melanomas can be tiny, but most are wider than 6 millimeters, roughly a quarter of an inch.
• Evolving. The mole has changed over the past few weeks or months.

Many melanomas show all five. Some show only one or two, so a single feature is enough reason to have a spot examined.

Book an appointment for these as well:

• A sore that does not heal, or heals and returns.
• A spot that bleeds, crusts or itches persistently.
• A new pigmented streak under a fingernail or toenail.
• Any spot that looks different from all your others.
• A scaly, rough patch that keeps coming back.

What NCI will and will not claim about prevention

This is where careful reading matters, because the honest position is not the slogan.

NCI states that ultraviolet radiation, from sunlight, sunlamps and tanning beds, is a risk factor for skin cancer. It also states, in plain terms, that it is not known whether sunscreen use or avoiding sun exposure lowers the risk of nonmelanoma skin cancer, because not enough studies have been done to prove it. For melanoma, NCI says it has not been proven that using sunscreen to prevent sunburn protects against melanoma caused by UV radiation.

What has been shown is narrower and still useful. Sunscreen prevents sunburn. It prevents actinic keratoses, the rough sun-damaged patches that can become squamous cell carcinoma. And it reduces the signs of ones already there.

NCI weighs the harms both ways. Sunscreen's harms are likely small: allergic reactions to skin creams, and less vitamin D made in the skin. Someone who uses sunscreen to avoid burning may also simply stay out longer. Meanwhile, NCI says the harms of avoiding sun may include mood disorders, sleep disturbance, higher blood pressure and impaired vitamin D metabolism.

Despite the unproven link, NCI reports that skin experts still suggest using sunscreen that protects against UV radiation, limiting time in the sun when it is strongest, and wearing long sleeves, long pants, sun hats and sunglasses outdoors. Our page on sun safety turns that into practical habits.

What raises risk

For melanoma, NCI lists a fair complexion, meaning skin that freckles and burns easily and tans poorly, light-colored eyes, and red or blond hair; long exposure to natural or artificial sunlight; a history of many blistering sunburns, especially as a child or teenager; many moles; a family history of unusual moles; a family or personal history of melanoma; and being White.

For nonmelanoma skin cancer the list overlaps but differs: long sun or tanning-bed exposure, fair complexion, actinic keratosis, past radiation treatment, a weakened immune system, and arsenic exposure.

NCI adds the point that gets lost every year: although a fair complexion is a risk factor, people of all skin colors can get skin cancer.

The numbers

The American Cancer Society projects 112,000 new melanomas of the skin in the United States in 2026 and 8,510 deaths. SEER, the federal cancer statistics program, carries that projection.

About 77 percent are found while still confined to the original site, 10 percent after spread to nearby lymph nodes and 5 percent after spread further. Five-year relative survival across all stages was 94.7 percent for people diagnosed from 2016 through 2022. Around 1.57 million Americans were living with a melanoma diagnosis in 2023.

That high figure reflects how many melanomas are caught while still local. It is a group statistic about people diagnosed years ago. It describes no individual, least of all anyone diagnosed at a later stage.

What this does not mean

• It does not mean sunscreen is pointless. It is proven to prevent sunburn and actinic keratoses; what is unproven is the direct link to lower cancer rates.
• It does not mean tanning beds are a reasonable alternative. They emit UV radiation, which is the established risk factor.
• It does not mean a mole is dangerous. Very few common or dysplastic moles turn into melanoma, and most melanomas do not start from a mole.
• It does not mean darker skin means no risk. It means a lower risk, a later average diagnosis and different places to look.

Our pages on melanoma and skin cancer prevention go further into both.

Sources

• https://www.cancer.gov/types/skin/patient/skin-prevention-pdq
• https://www.cancer.gov/types/skin/moles-fact-sheet
• https://www.cancer.gov/types/skin
• https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/melan.html

An AI-assisted editorial system helped prepare this page. No named medical reviewer has reviewed it unless one is listed.

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