LONDON, Sep 24 2026- Britain has just come through what the Met Office says was provisionally its hottest summer on record, with a mean temperature of 16.5 degrees Celsius and 621.9 hours of sunshine. For the millions who earn a living outdoors, on building sites, farms, roads and fishing boats, that sunshine is not a bonus. It is an occupational hazard that most employers still treat as a matter of personal choice.
The scale of the problem is now well documented. In 2019, 1.6 billion people of working age, roughly one in three, were exposed to solar ultraviolet radiation while working outdoors, according to joint estimates published by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO). That exposure caused nearly 19,000 deaths from non-melanoma skin cancer in 183 countries that year, almost one in three of all deaths from the disease, and outdoor workers were found to face a 60 percent higher risk than the general population. The death toll rose by 88 percent between 2000 and 2019, even as the share of workers exposed fell.
“Unprotected exposure to solar ultraviolet radiation at work is a major cause of occupational skin cancer,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus when the figures were released. “But there are effective solutions to protect workers from the sun’s harmful rays, and prevent their deadly effects.” The two agencies list shade, shifting hours away from solar noon, training, and equipping workers with sunscreen and personal protective clothing: broad-brimmed hats, long-sleeved shirts and long trousers. Of these, clothing is the one measure that works without reapplication, does not wash off in sweat and cannot be applied too thinly. It is also the one least often supplied.
What a Shirt Actually Blocks
The gap between what workers wear and what protects them is wide. A white cotton T-shirt has an ultraviolet protection factor, or UPF, of about 7, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation, and when it gets wet with sweat or rain that falls to about 3. A UPF 3 fabric lets roughly a third of the sun’s UV through to the skin.
Purpose-made garments perform differently. A UPF 50+ rating means the fabric blocks at least 98 percent of UV radiation, allowing two percent or less to reach the skin, which is the threshold the Skin Cancer Foundation requires before it will put its Seal of Recommendation on a garment. In the UK, dermatologist-recommended UV protective clothing is tested to the Australian and New Zealand standard AS/NZS 4399, the same standard Cancer Council Australia references. The European standard, EN 13758-2, sets a minimum UPF of 40 and caps UVA transmission at five percent.
“UPF clothing is an essential part of any sun protection strategy,” says Dr Dev Shah, a London consultant dermatologist and Mohs surgeon who endorses equatorsun, a British maker of sun protection clothing and swimwear. “It offers consistent coverage and long-term UV defence, especially for those at higher risk of skin cancer.”
The company was started in 2006 by a British mother, Annette, after her own melanoma diagnosis; she died in 2009 and her family has run it since. Its account of how sun protective clothing works, and why it tends to beat sunscreen in everyday use, rests on a point dermatologists have made for years. Sunscreen needs reapplying every two hours, washes off when people sweat or swim, and is almost never applied as thickly as the SPF test assumes. A shirt has none of those failure modes.
Sunscreen in the Toolbox, Not on the Skin
In practice, neither clothing nor sunscreen is reaching the people who need it. A survey of 2,298 agricultural and construction workers in the United States, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that only 14.6 percent of construction workers wore a long-sleeved shirt always or most of the time, and only 15.6 percent wore a wide-brimmed hat. Fewer than one in five in either sector regularly used sunscreen, more than half never used it on a warm sunny day, and about a third had been sunburnt in the previous year.
Britain is not exempt because it is cloudy. Research funded by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health and published in the British Journal of Cancer estimated that sun exposure at work causes 48 melanoma deaths and 241 new cases in Britain every year, with construction accounting for 44 percent of the deaths and agriculture 23 percent. “You don’t have to work in the Mediterranean or a traditionally sunny country for the sun to damage your skin,” said Dr Lesley Rushton of Imperial College London, who led the study.
The usual objection to long sleeves is heat. The WHO and the World Meteorological Organization estimate that 2.4 billion workers are already exposed to excessive heat, and telling a roofer to cover up at 35 degrees Celsius can sound like swapping one hazard for another. That was true of heavy cotton. It is less true of the lightweight, tightly knitted synthetic fabrics used in modern UPF garments, which are made to wick sweat away from the skin. Wet cotton, by contrast, loses most of its UV protection at precisely the moment the worker starts to sweat. Cancer Council Australia, which has campaigned on sun protection for more than four decades, adds that tighter weaves and darker colours protect more, and that any fabric protects less when stretched or wet. The WHO and ILO advise that protective measures apply whenever the UV index reaches 3, which in northern Europe means most of the summer, not only the heatwaves that make the news.
Where Sunscreen Is a Luxury
The argument for clothing is strongest where sunscreen is hardest to get. In November 2025 the UN Independent Expert on the rights of persons with albinism, Muluka-Anne Miti-Drummond, described skin cancer among people with albinism as a global health emergency, noting that in Africa they are up to 1,000 times more likely to develop the disease than the general population and that an estimated 98 percent do not live beyond 40 without sun protective precautions. “Failure to prevent foreseeable and unnecessary deaths to skin cancer is not just a violation of the right to health, but a violation of the right to life,” she said. Two months earlier the WHO had added sunscreen to its Model List of Essential Medicines for people with albinism. A hat and a long-sleeved shirt cost less, last for years and need no cold chain or supply of tubes.
Wealthy countries have their own gaps. Melanoma cases in the UK passed 20,000 a year for the first time in 2022, according to Cancer Research UK, which projects 26,500 a year by 2040 and estimates that nearly nine in ten cases are caused by excessive UV exposure. Globally, the International Agency for Research on Cancer expects melanoma to rise by more than 50 percent to over 500,000 new cases a year by 2040. “It’s concerning to see the rising number of people being diagnosed with melanoma skin cancer across the UK,” said Michelle Mitchell, Cancer Research UK’s chief executive.
None of this requires new science. Hard hats, high-visibility vests and steel-toed boots became standard issue because employers were made responsible for supplying them. Sun protection, in most countries and most workplaces, is still left to the worker, and the cheapest fix, a shirt and a hat, is also the oldest. “A safe and healthy working environment is a fundamental right at work,” said ILO Director-General Gilbert F. Houngbo. “Death caused by unprotected exposure to solar ultraviolet radiation while working is largely preventable through cost-effective measures.”
