A Bill to Ban Teenagers From Bronzing
Sanjana Rajasekaran | Apr 19, 2010 | Comments 1
Post-Spring Break, we Southern California residents might have the urge to sport our newly-acquired tans. The sheer number of students coming back to campus with a slightly darker shade or a robust orange glow seems to be an advertisement of America’s inevitable pull toward enhancing skin pigmentation.
Tanning has become increasingly convenient with the opening of new indoor tanning salons in addition to the classic and age-old use of the sun’s rays.
Recently, however, there have been efforts to regulate the use of indoor tanning services, particularly tanning lamps and tanning beds, for teenagers. It has long been known that individuals who use artificial UV equipment for tanning have as much as a 75 percent increased chance of developing melanoma — skin cancer to most — over their lifetimes.
Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission accused the Indoor Tanning Association for falsely advertising artificial tanning as “safe and beneficial.” This topic continues to be a subject of controversy. Should the government regulate artificial tanning or should it be a personal decision? Is restricting adolescents’ access to tanning salons too drastic a measure?
With these questions in mind, a panel of experts decided to urge the Food and Drug Administration to step up their regulations regarding the use of artificial tanning equipment, and even prohibit adolescents from tanning salons.
The idea was soon drafted into a bill, called The Tanning Bed Cancer Control Act. The bill proposes a limit to how long one can be exposed to artificial rays, puts a cap on the severity and temperature of the rays, and restricts tanning bed use for those under the age of 18. Several states are already regulating teenagers’ access to tanning salons.
In addition, indoor tanning services will soon carry a ten percent excise tax. The President of the Indoor Tanning Association (founded in 1999 to protect the freedom of individuals to get a suntan) said that this was ironic since tanning has proven health benefits. This act is purported to raise 2.7 million in its first decade.
On March 25, 2010, the General and Plastic Surgery Devices Panel of the Medical Devices Advisory Committee reviewed and discussed background information on UV tanning lamps using extensive literature about their association with skin cancer.
Since the 1980s and 1990s, tanning lamp usage in the United States, along with the industry itself, has grown rapidly.
According to the Indoor Tanning Association; there are over 25,000 professional tanning businesses across America. 30 million people — over 10 percent of the nation’s population visit an indoor tanning facility annually, and the total economic impact of these collective tanning businesses exceeds $5 billion a year. With this kind of success, tanning beds continue to attract children and teens. According to several national surveys, tanning bed usage in adolescent girls increased seven percent among 14-year-olds, to 16 percent by age 15, and had more than doubled that figure by age 17.
The efficiency of indoor tanning has literally been cultivated to a science. Tanning results in an increase in melanocytes (or pigment-containing cells) in response to ultraviolet light of varying wavelengths, UVA and UVB. Originally, tanning beds used high-pressure mercury vapor lamps as the source of UVB rays. But as safety concerns grew, UVA became the ray of choice for tanning, since they are supposedly less harmful than UVB, which are more likely to cause sunburns.
Still, it is known that UV radiation can produce genetic mutations in skin cells that can lead to cancer, and whether type A or B, ultraviolet light is a documented carcinogen. While medical experts recommend moderate doses of natural vitamin D from the sun, the amount of UV penetration in “clam shell” (tanning beds with flip-flopping standards of safe levels) cannot be certain until it might be too late.
The debate as to whether or not sunning naturally or opting to climb into a clam shell still resonates within the tanning community. Whatever options the tanner chooses, being safe remains top priority.
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Non-melanoma skin cancers kill 4000 Americans a year.
Vitamin D deficiency diseases at least 125 times that.
Avoiding the sun is like avoiding drinking water.
Vitamin D deficiency is hundreds of times more dangerous than the small risk of tanning- either indoors or out.
The lawyers are coming for the AMA and the dermatologists who thought they were god. They neglected to tell the rest of us to supplement vitamin D. Of course they had nary a clue of the importance of this all powerful steroid hormone. No matter- the lawsuits will come. Imagine what the parents of autistic children will do when they realize the doctor’s “advice” to avoid the sun and put plenty of sun screen on mommy and jr.?
Would not want to be ‘em!
Nothing matters more to overall health than maintaining a healthy, natural level of vitamin D (at least 50 ng/ml, year round).
If you want to drastically cut your chances of all cancers (including skin cancers), heart disease, diabetes, and a hundred others take your vitamin D and get moderate, regular sun. Avoiding the sun will take decades of healthy activity off your life.
In the end, nothing matters as much as vitamin D- and lots of it.
Your doctors will know nothing about it because their drug reps haven’t told them anything. Vitamin D3 -the natural form- not that synthetic D2 prescription c***, is practically free. The drug companies can’t make a dime off of it so why should they be inclined to promote it?
By the way the “race for the cure” has been largely won- it’s over!
Yep! Vitamin D deficiency accounts for up to 80% of all cases.
You can look it up!
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