Tanning Beds Cause Cancer as Much as Smoking Does

Camryn Hansen

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Jersey girls, listen and lighten up: tanning beds have been shown to cause cancer at the same rate that smoking does.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer has now re-classified the UV rays used in sun beds (the same as those in actual sunlight) from “probably” carcinogenic to a flat-out “carcinogenic to humans.” That’s because a recently published cancer study found that a person’s risk of developing melanoma (a type of skin cancer) is 75% higher if he or she starts tanning before the age of 30.

Sun beds and all types of ultraviolet rays are now ranked in the highest risk group by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, putting them in the same group as plutonium and radium, researchers said in a paper published today in the medical journal Lancet Oncology.

“Some people feel the need to tan to compete. My advice to them is: don’t do it with a sun bed, don’t even go get the tan outside,” Vincent Cogliano, the head of the IARC Monographs program, a World Health Organization unit, said in a telephone interview yesterday. -Bloomberg.com

The American Cancer Society estimates that out of the 68,720 patients that will contract melanoma this year, nearly 9000 will die from it.

This is more than enough reason to stop frequenting the tanning salon. Instead of striving to look like wrinkled leather by the age of 40, wear sunscreen and enjoy the skin you were born with. Not only will it last longer, you’re more likely to, too.