A Possible Relationship Between Facial Skin Cancer and Driving a Vehicle

Having had three skin cancers removed from my face—left side—I avoid sunlight. If the fish aren't biting in the shade, I'm not fishing. If I'm at a daytime blues festival, I'm under a canopy. While driving south one morning a few months ago I became concerned about the morning sun blazing through my driver's side window. I picked up a magazine and held it between the window and the left side of my face, shielding the left side of my face from the blazing sun. Then I remembered that all three of my skin cancers were on the left side of my face. Then I wondered if the sun through my driver's side window caused my cancers.

Headed south in the morning, the left side of a driver's face is in the sun. Headed north in the afternoon, the left side of a driver's face is in the sun. Safety glass offers no protection from UV light. Inexpensive UV filter film does. For about $10 a small piece of UV filter film could be pasted to the inside of a driver's side window of any vehicle or factory installed inside the window—if there is in fact a relationship between the driver's side window and facial skin cancer.

I e-mailed my concerns to the Centers for Disease Control and to the American Medical Association. Alas, they didn't answer me. Those lofty organizations must not listen to lowly anthropologists. So one of you lowly pre-med students or biology students out there in Internet land perform a survey of doctors treating skin cancer and answer the question—are there more cancers on the left side of faces than the right side?

If there are, as I suspect, many more facial skin cancers on the left side than the right side, write a paper and submit it to JAMA. Just don't forget to give you-know-who credit for the idea.