There’s more than one reason why tanning beds are bad for you
THEY’RE about to be banned across four states, but once you read about all the icky things that can happen from solarium use, you might not be so disappointed.
IT’S summertime, and the temptation to tan is stronger than ever.
In Australia, commercial solariums will be banned from December 31 2014 in South Australia, Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales. But if you’re annoyed at that decision, you might not be once you’ve been made aware of all the freaky things that can happen to you from using a solarium.
Skin cancer is the most predominant consequence of indoor tanning. According to Craig Sinclair, Cancer Council Australia’s public health committee chairman, “up to 280 malignant melanomas a year are attributable to sunbed use, and one in every six melanomas in young people are from sunbed use.
“So there is no question that there is a direct link between regular use of sunbeds and malignant melanoma,” he told the ABC.
Equally as alarming is research from earlier this year, which found that more skin cancer cases can be attributed to indoor tanning than lung cancer cases can be attributed to smoking (as a percentage of total cases) in the Western world. This revelation, published in the journal JAMA Dermatology, was discovered after 88 studies and data from 490,000 people from the United States, Europe and Australia were analysed.
But while it’s easy to numb yourself to the long-term dangers of solariums, you might not be aware that there are also more immediate consequences to this kind of tanning that can land you in the emergency room.
Researchers from the U.S. Centers For Disease Control and Prevention found that hospitals treat about 3,234 indoor tanning-related injuries per year. The most common injuries were skin burns, passing out and eye injuries.
Lead researcher Gery P. Guy Jr says that spending time in tanning beds can also lead to allergic reactions, rashes, itching and dry skin.
“If the tanning bed isn’t clean, you can also get a serious skin infection with symptoms like genital warts, skin rashes, skin warts, and flaky, discoloured patches on your skin, UV exposure from indoor tanning accelerates skin ageing,” he told The Huffington Post through a spokeswoman.
“The gradual loss of the skin’s elasticity results in wrinkles, skin sagging, and dry, coarse skin.”
He also noted that exposure to UV radiation from indoor tanning is much more intense than anything that could come from the sun. Additionally, sensitive areas of the skin — that wouldn’t usually be exposed in outdoor tanning — are often left unprotected during indoor sessions.
In January, a review published in the journal JAMA Dermatology noted that more than one-third of adults in 16 Western countries have tanned indoors once or more. It also stated that more than half of college students and one in five teens in Western countries has tanned indoors.
This is an edited extract from Leigh Weingus at the Huffington Post, and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.
