08-03-2023
UNIDEMI, led by Professor Luís Lapão, is developing a project in partnership with the Lisbon City Council (CML) and other national partners (Portuguese Institute of the Sea and Atmosphere and Nova Medical School) and international partners (DGUV-German Ministry of Health). The main objective is to obtain, for the first time, direct and precise measurements of daily ultraviolet solar radiation doses and estimate the risk of developing skin cancer due to occupational exposure among outdoor workers at CML.
The project is called MEAOW – Measuring Solar Ultraviolet Radiation in Outdoor Workers in Lisbon. It is quite relevant, especially considering the increasing incidence of skin cancer in recent years, making this type of carcinoma (keratinocyte) a public and occupational health problem, having been the fourth most common type of cancer worldwide in 2020.
Climate change, which is increasingly frequent and unpredictable, is another reason why it is extremely important to study this type of carcinoma and how daily exposure to ultraviolet radiation may be linked to this growing number of cases.
To this end, Lisbon City Council has offered to involve its outdoor workers, such as gardeners and pavers, in the MEAOW Project, so that the dose of solar ultraviolet radiation to which they are exposed daily can be measured.
The data will be uploaded by the workers themselves to a digital platform related to sun exposure - SUN@METHIS - and can be accessed by the CML research and occupational health teams involved, who will then estimate the risk of developing skin cancer not only for those workers, but also for the Lisbon district in general.
