In sunny Tucson, why isn’t sunscreen everywhere like soap?

A cancer-fighting project here would like to make a squirt of sunscreen available in more spots around town.

Skin cancer rates are on the rise, “skin cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United States, and most cases are preventable,” the Surgeon General has just said in an update to the Call to Action to Prevent Skin Cancer.

The UA's Protect Your Skin project is going a long way to help prevent sunburns, but they need more local businesses to help by offering sunscreen dispensers.

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum has offered sunscreen dispensers in public restrooms for about 10 years, and other places can get them for cheap from the Skin Cancer Institute at the University of Arizona Cancer Center.

Museum docents had noticed out-of-towners were typically unprepared to spend a day in the sun (lotsa locals aren’t either tbh.) So the museum paid for a quality sunscreen picked out by the Skin Cancer Institute, said Denise Spartonos, the Institute’s community outreach coordinator.

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Then the Institute won a grant that paid for dispensers, signs, and a year’s worth of sunscreen at several other local attractions.

When the money ran out, some of the attractions, like Pima Air & Space Museum, kept providing sunscreen and some didn’t.

Now the nonprofit Institute is selling dispenser kits for $150, and they come with a gallon of made-in-Arizona sunscreen. You can also rent a sunscreen station for $25 a day for events.