Jessica Dean Healthy Living: Tanning Beds
By: Alexandra Brown
Updated: March 18, 2013
Tanning beds emit a heavy dose of u-v light -- roughly ten to fifteen times the amount you would get sitting outside at noon. That sun splurge significantly increases the risk for skin cancer, and that risk goes up the earlier you start.Yet
young adults are not prohibited from tanning in many parts of the country.Now experts are calling on states and the food and drug administration to beef up tanning bed restrictions, before teenage melanoma cases skyrocket. In some places, kids as young as 10 are stepping in to the tanning bed. But researchers say that even if a parent signs off on tanning -- the risk for skin cancer remain.
The F-D-A requires tanning salons to have certain controls on the time spent in a bed, and the dose of u-v exposure. Right now tanning beds are classified as class one medical devices -- the same as tongue depressors and elastic bandages.An f-d-a advisory panel recommended changes be made to that classification -- something the agency is currently considering.
Comments
A good journalist does some research before echoing press-releases and headlines from biased reports. To say that using a sunbeds "significantly increases the risk of skin-cancer" when research in fact shows that this "significant increase" is from 0.030% to 0.036%, is a gross exaggeration. Furthermore this "huge increased risk" occurs statistically only after more than three sunburns on the same spot of the body and only for those of skin-type 1 who, according to any rule, are not allowed to have tan in a commercial tanning salon.
The question is - is the journalist just a victim of a ruthless PR-campaign to keep us sick and in the dark about any health effects from sunbeds or is she paid to be a part of this campaign?
There is no skin-cancer epidemic. Only exaggerated diagnoses used to scare creating false statistics to scare us away from sunbeds and their health benefits.
http://www.tannersrights.com/revenue-from-melanoma-marketing-predicted-to-reach-5-billion-by-2015.html/
Erica L.
March 18, 2013 at 12:47 pm
