New work from members of the team which brought us “Vitamin D - 600,000 deaths a year could be prevented!” in 2007 [1] suggests that 45,000 of these are vitamin D-deficient Americans. For half of the deaths the D-deficiency will be due to the northerly latitude of the person’s home (the greater one’s potential direct skin exposure to ultraviolet B, the move vitamin D the body makes). For the other half of the deaths the D-deficiency will be because the person lived in an urban location. The shade from both buildings and air pollution means that UVB exposures are higher in rural areas than in urban areas at the same latitude.

European health services must invest in sunlight and vitamin D

Take Europeans as an example. For a variety of reasons they tend to have lower average blood serum vitamin D3 levels than Americans.

Based on 2007 figures, the estimated annual cost to the taxpayer of diseases attributable to vitamin D deficiency was estimated to be 187,000 million euros(€). On the other hand, the estimated annual cost of raising the average European’s blood serum D3 levels to 40 nanograms per millilitre (generally considered a healthy level) would be around €10,000 million. Raising average blood serum D3 levels would be achieved by promoting an individual daily intake of 2,000 to 3,000 international units (iu). This daily intake could be achieved by mixture of a daily supplement, fortifying some staple foods and prudent exposure to both direct sunshine and UVB from sun beds. The €10,000 million figure includes the cost of regular blood tests.

The researchers accept that further research on the effectiveness of vitamin D3 supplements is needed, but argue that there is already sufficient evidence to take action straight away.

Cancer and vitamin D3 deficiency

The researchers also confirmed that:

• direct skin exposure to ultraviolet B light reduced the risk of developing bladder, gall bladder, gastric, pancreatic, prostate, rectal and renal cancer
• ten types of cancer were strongly linked to smoking, six types with alcohol, and seven types with Latino/Hispanic origin
• seven types of cancer were inversely correlated with poverty level

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