Two things that are not true about blondes: 1) They have more fun, and 2) they have more bone fractures.

Even if those were true, I suppose they might cancel each other out. But, in fact, the “common wisdom” that people with blond hair or light-colored skin have a higher risk for osteoporosis and bone fractures is a myth. Medical data show that blondes, brunettes and redheads seem to have the same risk for osteoporosis and fractures, Dennis M. Black, Ph.D. said at a conference on osteoporosis sponsored by the University of California, San Francisco.

Another myth: Fracture risk is higher in the northern latitudes of a country, so that people in Minnesota are more prone to fractures than, say, people in Florida. In fact, within the United States, the lowest hip fracture rates are in the northern areas of the country.

That last one was a bit of a trick question, because data have shown that Scandinavians have a higher fracture risk than do equatorial peoples. The incidence of osteoporotic fractures in Norway is 421/100,000 people, compared with 1/100,000 in Nigeria. But within any one country, there is no significant north/south difference in fracture rates, said Dr. Black, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the university.

So, what does increase a person’s risk of having one of the 1.5 million osteoporotic fractures that occur each year in the United States? Older age and sex, for starters. At age 50 years, a woman’s lifetime risk of fracture exceeds her combined risk of breast, ovarian and uterine cancer. For men who are 50, their lifetime risk of fracture exceeds the risk of prostate cancer. A third of women and a fifth of men will develop osteoporotic fractures in their lifetimes.

Race also is a risk factor. Age-adjusted fracture rates are 968/100,000 white people in the United States but only 314/100,000 for U.S. blacks and 219/100,000 for U.S. Hispanics, for example.

A family history of hip fracture doubles your risk for hip fracture, but the same does not apply to spine fractures. More dramatically, having had any kind of nonvertebral fracture yourself increases your risk for any kind of nonvertebral fracture by 1.5- to 3-fold independent of