Sun Set.(sun exposure and skin cancer)

Byline: PHOTOGRAPHED BY PATRICK DEMARCHELIER

It's easy to tune out warnings about the sun, but that won't do our skin any favors, according to the latest research. Soleil it on us.

As surely as the sun rises in the east without fail every morning, dermatologists can be counted on to warn us to take cover from it. But now, those familiar cautions have some fresh research behind themincluding news of a damaging type of sunlight other than UVA and UVB, and discoveries that your height, bank account, and medication use may predict your risk of skin cancer.

THE BIG "SAFE TANNING" MYTH

Genetic tests indicate that "it may not be possible to elicit a tan without simultaneously producing mutations within DNA," says David E. Fisher, chief of the department of dermatology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Translation: All tanning is a sign of damage. "Although much of the damage is repaired, eventually injury accumulates," Fisher warnsand that can ultimately contribute to dark spots, wrinkles, roughness, or skin cancer.

CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

New evidence points to "a genuine increase" in melanoma in recent decades that isn't simply attributable to earlier detection, says Eleni Linos, a scientist at Stanford University Hospital. Last year, the National Cancer Institute found that from 1980 to 2004, melanoma rates rose an alarming 50 percent among women ages 15 to 39. Twenty percent of people ages 18 to 39 report recently visiting a tanning bed, according to the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. People who do so before age 35 have a 75 percent higher risk of melanoma than those who do not, research has found.