When we first launched Cosmopolitan's Practice Safe Sun (PSS) campaign in 2006, it was in response to some shocking statistics I'd just learned: Melanoma had become the second most frequently reported cancer in women in their 20s. It was only later, though, that I began to hear the stories behind the stats, and they've been heartbreaking: Women in their 20s and 30s having multiple and disfiguring surgeries to remove the cancer and many dying of the disease. I learned this week about a young mother who died of melanoma five months after her twins were born. So often the common denominator among these women is that they loved to be tan--from the sun and often from tanning beds as well.
These stories have kept us highly motivated at Cosmo to make women aware of the dangers of both outdoor and indoor tanning. This week we took Cosmo's PSS initiative to a new level. We hosted a press conference in our offices at which Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Congressman Charlie Dent (R-PA) announced their plans to introduce The Tanning Bed Cancer Control Act, a key piece of bipartisan legislation that would expand federal regulation of tanning beds with the aim of limiting the strength of the UV rays emitted by tanning beds and the time consumers may be exposed to harmful radiation.
If you have any doubts about how dangerous beds are, consider the announcement made in July by the World Health Organization. They described tanning beds as definitely carcinogenic--putting them in the same category as cigarettes, asbestos, and uranium. If you tan indoors before age 30, your skin cancer risk rises by 75 percent (and nearly 70 percent of customers are young women). When we did an undercover report with ABC's 20/20, we found tanning salons routinely misrepresented the risks.
But at the same time that the evidence against tanning has become more clear, we've seen the continuing glorification of the tan in popular culture. Just check out the pervasive reality series, Jersey Shore. The daily routine is "GTL"--gym, tanning, laundry.
As Representative Maloney said when she introduced this new bill, tanning beds are the cigarettes of our age. We owe it to everyone, particularly to young women, to make sure that the risks of tanning are clearly communicated and understood and that tanning beds are regulated as tightly as devices with their risk-profile merit. Please write your congressperson and let him or her know you support this legislation.
And if you use a tanning bed, please stop. Now.
Ronald L. Moy, M.D., FAAD: Tanning Beds: The New Tobacco?
Wow. What an unbelievably rude thing to say.
Ultraviolet rays are a nutrient. They produce vitamin D in quantities that cannot be replicated with pills.
You can get skin cancer from going outside as well. But to date, no rational person has suggested that staying indoors equates to a healthy, active lifestyle.
As a melanoma survivor, former "teen" tanning bed user & operator, and the mother of 4 daughters, I have a unique perspective on this issue.
The health risks of tanning bed use are indisputable. Is is impossible to ignore the fact that an industry profits by selling carcinogens to our children. It's impossible to ignore the fact that the federal government, despite scientific data that repeatedly reports the carcinogenic dangers of tanning exposure, continues to allow the sale of this carcinogen to our children.
Since my melanoma diagnosis I have volunteered as an advocate. I communicate with hundreds of melanoma patients. A common thread in the stories of these young patients is tanning bed USE NOT MISUSE.
I commend your efforts to bring awareness to the dangers of tanning bed use and hope that you will use your "FUN & FEARLESS” persuasion to urge Congresswoman Maloney and Congressman Dent to also introduce a simple federal bill to ban the sale of indoor UV tanning exposure to minors. Nothing short of a BAN on the sale of tanning bed exposure to MINORS is enough.
Visit "Ban Indoor UV Tanning" on Facebook
There have been 2 studies over the past 10 years that looked into the relationship between UV light, melanoma, and exposure. One of the studies found that people who work outdoors had a lower rate of melanoma than people who worked indoors. The other found that once a person had melanoma their chances of survival increased by over 50% with sun exposure. Couple those with the fact that most melanoma lesions occur on covered parts of the body and it makes you wonder...
UV exposure in moderation is much more helpful to your body than avoiding UV exposure.
The issue that I addressed was TANNING BEDS and their carcinogenic nature, not natural sunlight.
I have always been in agreement that there is a "healthy" level of exposure to NATURAL sunlight. As for a "healthy" exposure to tanning beds exposure...that study has not been done. For example, there have been NO complete, studies that definitively conclude that ANY expsoure to tanning beds is safe on the long term. Even though EVERYONE doesn't get melanoma or skin cancer after using a tanning bed, the jury is still out as to what the impacts are to the human DNA after this exposure. Future generations may very well be impacted in ways we can't even understand today. The studies, simply haven't been done.
What we DO know NOW, is that tanning bed exposure IS carcinogenic. As for other melanoma risks, I encourage everyone to learn about all of the risks for melanoma and skin cancer.
I'm curious, are YOU ok with an industry profiting by selling carcinogenic tanning expsoure to our children?
Pharmaceutical companies make hundreds of millions of dollars in SPF sales because people are being scared into using their product.
Cosmedic companies sell hundreds of millions of dollars in additional product to people who remain pale year round.
Dermatologists hope to install "medical tanning units" to treat teenage skin ailments like acne and charge $100+ per session.
And people die by the hundreds of thousands every year from heart disease and cancer because they are deficient in Vitamin D.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/health/29mela.html?_r=1
"In recent years there has been a sharp rise in reported cases of malignant melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. But a British study has found evidence that the epidemic may be due at least in part to “diagnostic drift,” a growing tendency to identify and treat benign lesions as malignant cancers."
In other words, they don't know what causes melanoma. What they DO know is that people are getting far less vitamin D than they need becuase they are being scared out of the sun. There was a recent CLINICAL trial that showed that women with higher levels of vitamin D were 50%-75% less likely to get breast cancer. That's just 1 cancer, vitamin D has been linked to 20 cancers as well as MS, alzheimers, and others.
Isn't it amazing that something as powerful as the sun the we evolved under has such an influence on our lives? It's an incredible PR campaign that is convincing people to be afraid of it.
Cigarettes: Increase your risk of developing lung cancer by 2200%. Lung cancer kills 140,000 Americans each year. Cigarettes have no major health benefits.
Tanning beds: All 4 American studies found no significant association between tanning bed use and melanoma. Melanoma kills 8,000 Americans each year. Moderate UV exposure has a tremendous list of health benefits mainly due to the Vitamin D that is created. People with low Vit D (77% of Americans) are at much higher risk of developing and dying from heart disease (the #1 US killer), stroke, more than 20 types of cancer including breast, colon and prostate, diabetes, MS... Together, the things that tanning can lower your risk of add up to well more than 1 million deaths per year. BTW, women with low Vit D are FOUR TIMES AS LIKELY TO DIE FROM BREAST CANCER which kills 40,000 American women each year.
The 75% figure applies only to people with Type I skin - they can't tan and only burn. 5% of Americans have Type I skin - the rest appear to have little to no increased risk of melanoma from tanning beds. A WHO rep admitted in a Canadian interview they cherry-picked the Type I’s from northern European studies in places like Sweden and Scotland to cook up that 75% figure. Anytime you see someone use that figure they are misleading you.
Ms. White, stop preaching an irresponsible message that is responsible for much unnecessary suffering and death.
Weight loss. Don't get me wrong: totally not worth it. But weight loss is a health benefit of smoking.