Young women who fancy a tanned skin for their social gatherings, specifically those in their early adulthood, resort to a range of techniques to get rid of their pale skin looks and primary among them is the use of indoor tanning beds, which researchers say is the first step towards skin cancer.
Dr. Rogerio Neves, deputy director of the Penn State Hershey Melanoma and Skin Cancer Center, pegs artificial tanning as the major culprits for melanoma. According to currently available information, melanoma is now the second most common form of cancer found in women aged 20 to 30 years.
According to researchers, there has been an eightfold increase in the number of young women in that age bracket who have been diagnosed with melanoma. The numbers aren’t limited to just women as during the same period there has been a fourfold increase in melanoma in young men of the same age.
According to Neves, though the trend wasn’t clearly related to regular exposure, the rise in the use of indoors tanning beds is one of the main reasons behind this trend.
Tanning is offered as a perk in many fitness centres and gyms with customers being offered unlimited sessions under the lamps. It has also been noted that young users are mostly introduced to tanning beds as a one-time thing, which they may have planned for their prom, but this soon turns into addiction.
“When you are under that lamp, it helps release endorphins, which make you feel relaxed and well,” Neves says.
As a part of their study, Neves and his team, managed to involve 5,600 high school students. According to their findings, nearly a quarter of the participants said they participated in indoor tanning more than once. More than half said they had used an artificial tanning bed more than 10 times in the past year.
Radiation in tanning beds
The lamps used in tanning beds emit over 95 per cent UVA rays and minimal UVB rays. The UVB rays that come from natural sunshine are what make you feel burned and red and cause you to seek shade and protection. Because they are present in such small quantities in the tanning beds, Neves says, “You can stay in there frying and you are not feeling any bad sensations.”
UVA radiation is also more harmful than UVB in that it penetrates deeper into the skin and create more harmful mutations.
“There is no such thing as a healthy tan,” Neves says. That is why individuals who have darker skin because of their ethnic backgrounds must still use sunscreen and other precautions to avoid prolonged exposure outdoors.
As if skin cancer weren’t enough of a danger, artificial tanning can cause other problems such as cataracts, reactions with medications and early-onset aging of the skin which makes you look older than you really are.
Hygienic tanning beds
Then there is the question of how hygienic the tanning beds are. “There have been cases of people contracting HPV and herpes infections from poorly sanitized beds,” Neves says.
His native Brazil banned artificial tanning nationwide in 2009, and Australia and several European countries have followed suit since then.
In May 2014, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett signed a law that teenagers 16 and younger cannot use indoor tanning facilities and those who are 17 must have parental consent. Two months later, the U.S. surgeon general issued a call to action against the $5 billion tanning industry. Following California’s ban in 2011, ten other states have since passed under-18 legislation: Vermont, Nevada, Texas, Oregon, Illinois, Washington, Minnesota, Hawaii, Louisiana and Delaware.
Neves says those who work in the industry won’t be out of jobs – they’ll simply switch to safer methods such as spray tanning, which interacts with the keratin in the skin to more safely produce a temporary glow. He hopes the political bans and attention will make a difference: “When the surgeon general comes in, that’s when people start to listen.”
This has to be the most ridiculous non-scientific article that keeps getting copy and pasted all over the scaresational internet.