**Incidence of Melanoma and Non-Melanoma Skin Cancer in the Inhabitants of the Upper Silesia, Poland**

Małgorzata Juszko-Piekut, Aleksandra Moździerz, Zofia Kołosza, Magdalena Królikowska-Jerużalska, Paulina Wawro-Bielecka, Grażyna Kowalska-Ziomek, Dorota Olczyk and Jerzy Stojko

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http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/55239

**1. Introduction**

In recent years, non-melanoma incidence rate has been ranked in the 4th place, and cutaneous melanoma has not been recorded in the first ten places among the most frequent cancers in the inhabitants of the Upper Silesia. Despite high incidence rates, the progno‐ ses of the skin cancers are good, thus the cancer mortality is ranked lower than in the first ten places [1-3]. The authors of the study have already presented epidemiological analy‐ ses of the incidence of those cancers [4-7]. Thus the aim of the present study was to continue the evaluation of the incidence rates of non-melanoma skin cancers in the inhabitants of the Upper Silesia in 1999-2007.

The Upper Silesia Industrial Area, occupying the central part of Silesia, has been the most industrial and most ecologically degraded area of Poland. Called the Silesia Agglomera‐ tion, it is the biggest urban and industrial agglomeration in the country assembling a number of big cities and industrial areas surrounding them. This affects the landscape and living conditions of habitants. Here, the main source of pollution is the industry, especial‐ ly mining and energy industries. Heavy industry, underdeveloped as well as underinvest‐ ed, emits enormous amount of the particulate matter and gases into the atmosphere [8].

© 2013 Juszko-Piekut et al.; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2013 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Moreover, it was the most populated area of Poland where there were 393 inhabitants per 1km2 .
