EDITORIAL

Seen any mice with suntans at Starbucks?

   Not that the lines aren’t already long enough at Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks, but we would not be surprised if either establishment began posting news articles about a recent Rutgers University study on caffeine and skin cancer.
   No, the study does not add skin cancer to the list of health risks staring up at you from the bottom of your coffee cup. On the contrary, the Rutgers researchers report findings which suggest that a certain amount of caffeine might actually help protect you from skin cancer. That is, if you happen to be a hairless mouse. Such were the laboratory subjects in this particular study, all of them exposed to ultraviolet-B light to stimulate the growth of precancerous skin cells which can result from too much time in the sun.
   "Some were fed water containing caffeine, some had wheels on which they could run, some had both and a control group had neither," AP reported.
   Precancerous cells self-destructed in the caffeine-drinking mice at a 95 percent higher rate. The rate was 120 percent for mice who ran on the wheel while eschewing caffeine. No word on whether these mice favored "healthier" coffee alternatives like herbal tea or bottled water during their workouts.
   But the big winners in the study were the mice who both ran on the wheel and ingested caffeine. Precancerous cells on their skin self-destructed at a 400 percent higher rate.
   Although the Rutgers report was taken seriously enough to be published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last week, it would be easy to observe that a hairless mouse with a good tan is a rare site — even in August — and dismiss the relevance of all this to caffeine-imbibing humans.
   And yet, who among us has not had the misfortune of being served a cup of coffee that tasted like "water containing caffeine."
   Who among us has not gone home from work feeling as though we had spent the day running on a treadmill to nowhere?
   And who among us has not been made to feel health-challenged because we chose to indulge in that second or third cup of coffee?
   No, we prefer to believe that there is definitely cause for good cheer in this latest New Jersey contribution to the body of scientific knowledge. Keep those feet moving and that coffee coming and you may indeed improve your chances of avoiding the most stubbornly ignored health risk of the summer season.
   After all, every minute you spend on those lines inside your favorite local coffee establishment will be one less minute spent under the harmful rays of the sun.