No such thing as a “safe tan”

I was happy to see that finally it has been brought to the public’s attention that tanning booths are very dangerous. Those in the holistic community have been saying it for years and many of the owners of those booths knew it also and did not use the booths themselves. It’s on a parallel with the tobacco companies who still claim that smoking does not cause cancer.
It was all over the networks today: International cancer experts have moved tanning beds into the top cancer risk category, deeming them as deadly as arsenic and mustard gas. The risk of skin cancer jumps by 75 percent when people start using tanning beds before age 30. The new classification means tanning beds are definite causes of cancer, alongside tobacco, the hepatitis B virus and chimney sweeping, among others. The research was published online in the medical journal Lancet Oncology on Wednesday July 29, 2009, by experts at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization.
Most lights used in tanning beds give off mainly ultraviolet radiation, which cause skin and eye cancer, according to the International Agency for Cancer Research. Previous studies found younger people who regularly use tanning beds are eight times more likely to get melanoma than people who have never used them. In the past, WHO warned people younger than 18 to stay away from tanning beds.
A study of tanning bed users published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, found evidence that the UV in tanning beds may stimulate the brain to produce endorphins. These “feel-good” hormones are released during exercise, drug use or cigarette smoking. “The relaxing and reinforcing effects of UV exposure contribute to tanning behavior in frequent tanners, and should be explored in greater detail,” the study’s authors conclude.

Although the World Health Organization (WHO) has called for teens to be banned from indoor tanning due to the dangers, only half of the states in the U.S. regulate tanning bed use by teens.
Several years ago I attended the wake of a lovely young woman in her thirties, with young children, who died of cancer ~ which started with melanoma and spread to her brain and liver. During chemotherapy, surgery and radiation she continued to go to the tanning booths. She was truly addicted.
It wasn’t all that long ago that no one wanted a tan, as that meant that you worked outdoors for a living. My mother grew up on a farm and if there had been a Baby Burka available ~ she would have made me wear it. As it was I had to wear a hat and long sleeved shirt whenever I was outside. I was in my teens before I got my first sunburn ~ thank you Mother. But when people started traveling to Florida or to the Islands in the Winter ~ coming home with a tan became a status.symbol. It is time to rethink those values.