Playground duty puts teachers at risk of skin cancer, study finds

To do this, he created a mathematical model to measure average sun exposure for a teacher doing a standard amount of playground duty each week, depending on where they were in the state and the timing of the breaks.

“In the study, we assumed the teachers were outside for one first break and one second break [a week], which is based on the Queensland Teachers’ Union standard of 90 minutes of playground supervision,” he said.

“But in smaller schools, a teacher might spend five days a week outside, not to mention a child who would potentially spend all 10 school breaks in a week outside.”

Complicating the issue is the sheer size of Queensland, which means because the state only has one time zone, the actual UV index at any given time can be very different across the state.

Mr Dexter said his model shows that the timing of school breaks means teachers are being exposed to the maximum amount of UV radiation when working their standard playground shifts.

“The advice that is often given is to avoid being out in the sun between 10am and 2pm but, unfortunately, Queensland schools usually have both of their lunch breaks somewhere in that window,” he said.

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“So having this one-clock, one-system approach to the whole state is possibly flawed.”

The model shows that schools in the Sunshine Coast and Wide Bay regions could benefit from shifting their break times the most, with a teacher’s relative risk increasing by up to 64 per cent depending on what time of day they are on playground duty.

In a real-world example, Mr Dexter found that teachers at two Brisbane schools, separated by just 13 kilometres, had a 44 per cent difference in their relative risk of skin cancer because their breaks were held at different times of the day.

Even in the public system, school principals have a lot of power to alter school hours, including lunch breaks, and Mr Dexter said they should be encouraged to get advice about whether it would be worth changing those hours to benefit both teachers and students.

“Rather than trying to change individual teachers’ behaviour, if we can get schools – and even the Education Department – on board to apply institutional change, everybody benefits,” Mr Dexter said.

The research was carried out as a proof of concept and did not take into account any sun protection that teachers might use or any personal variation in their habits, however Mr Dexter is currently working on expanding the model to include those variables.

The research has been published in the Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B: Biology.