Tanning Beds
Statistics
- The Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine reported that in a survey of 7,000 teenagers, one in three girls and 11% of boys say they have used an indoor tanning bed at least once in their life.
- It was also discovered that risk for melanoma from sun exposure was four times greater in red-haired women, who are typically more fair skinned compared with dark brown or black hair. Blondes had twice the risk compared with women with brown or black hair.
Tanning beds pose deadly dangers
The numbers are staggering. People who use tanning beds are more than 75 percent more likely to get melanoma than people who do not use tanning beds according to the International Journal of Cancer.
Researchers believe that people who use tanning beds before the age of 35 are at the greatest risk. Many scientists agree that young adults should not use tanning beds and restricted access of sun beds to minors should be strongly considered.
Researchers at Dartmouth reported that people who have ever visited a tanning salon were 2.5 times more likely to later get squamous cell skin cancer, which can lead to melanoma and 1.5 times more likely to develop basal skin cancer than those who have never tanned.
In a study conducted by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute more than 160,000 Scandinavian women were tracked for 8 years. Their personal characteristics were tracked including eye color, skin color, hair color and the amount of moles they had on their body.
Their histories of sunburn and tanning patterns were also recorded. Researchers tracked their rates of melanoma 8 years later and found 187 cases of melanoma.
Many people hear the dangers of tanning beds in relation to skin cancers, yet tanning salons continue to grow and boom with business, especially with the younger crowd.
When asking Courtney Holbreck, a senior biology major at Colorado State University if she was aware the dangers of tanning beds, she said she was aware of their effects but still outweighs the dangers with the benefits that tanning brings her.
“I am in a wedding this summer; I will stop tanning once the wedding is over,” said Holbreck.
However, after talking to many students on the CSU campus there seems to always be an excuse to tan. From a vacation to Hawaii in May to “it makes my skin more clear,” there are many excuses.
The researchers at the National Cancer Institute found that no matter what eye color or hair color, women who had visited a tanning parlor just once a month were 55% more likely to later develop melanoma than women who did not.
Those who used tan lamps in their 20’s had the greatest later risk, about 150% higher than similarly aged women who shunned tanning beds.
“I have heard the risks of tanning beds but I just don’t think I would ever get melanoma,” said Lacey Smith, a junior English major at CSU.
The “it will never happen to me” attitude is not un-common with college students.
Tanning salons near CSU including Sunset Beach Tanning Salon and Laurel’s Salon of Distinction are constantly busy with waits up to 45 minutes long to use a tanning bed. For the most part, students do not take the dangers of tanning seriously, a main reason why scientists are pushing for restricted sun bed use.
“I don’t think I will ever stop tanning unless I am directly affected with skin cancer myself. I just like to be tan,” said Smith.