Is A Teen Tanning Ban The Answer Or Do We Look At The Real Problem?

There has been a lot of talk about a teen tanning ban. No one can dispute the fact that too much UV is dangerous. Everything in moderation is the key risk benefit.

The real problem is the lack of professional standards for all tanning salons and equipment. Did you know that anyone can purchase a tanning bed in Canada and start tanning people without any operator training or certifications? In the European market, as many as 95% of tanning beds or tanning salons are self-serve (coin/slide card/unattended) operations. Things are quite the opposite in Canada; more than 90% of tanning beds have operators on site.

The Joint Canadian Tanning Association (JCTA) and their members feel a teen tanning ban is not the right answer. We have been calling for provincial standards to formalize current voluntary practices already in place in tanning salons including:

Parental Consent for everyone under 18, rather tan a teen tanning ban
Protective eye wear is mandatory
Skin typing every client correctly
All tanning operators need to be trained and certified
All tanning salon equipment must be controlled by a trained and certified operator
Never tan a skin type 1 client (always burn, never tan)
Banning self-serve tanning equipment

Health agencies seldom mention professional tanning salons and focus their efforts on tanning equipment. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is a branch of the World Health Organization (WHO). The IARC misreport’s a blanket 75% increased risk for melanoma from commercial tanning units for people under 35. In fact, if you remove home units (40% increased risk) and medical tanning units (96% increase risk) from the IARC data, the weighted increased risk is only 6% for commercial sunbeds which includes skin type I individuals. Removing skin type I person’s data from the IARC study, as professional tanning salons do, eliminates the risk entirely and may actually show UV tanners having a lower risk in this data set. The IARC data was recently reviewed by Dr. Mia Papas at the 3rd North American Congress of Epidemiology in Montreal, June 21-24, 2011.

“Less than three-tenths of 1 percent who tanned frequently developed melanoma while less than two-tenth of 1 percent who didn’t tan developed melanoma.” From the article “Tanning Beds: What do the numbers really mean” by Dr. Ivan Oransky, editor of Reuters Health. Oransky pointed out that the data dermatologist say is evidence that tanning increases melanoma risk doesn’t really show much of an increase. This is one more case per thousand subjects.

Also, if you remove users of home tanning equipment or skin type I out of data set there isn’t any difference in risk.

How can Health Organizations report that UV is dangerous and should be avoided without quantifying? This is as misleading as saying “water causes drowning, avoid water all together”. We all need a balance of ultra violet light, similarly to needing a balance of water. We need to consider what a reasonable amount of UV exposure is and how to limit exposure time.

A teen tanning ban is a powerful statement. Especially considering there isn’t any increased risk if we implement professional standards. Ask yourself who has a better chance of not having an accident, someone who operates a vehicle without trainings and certifications or someone who has completed extensive training and is certified to drive. It all comes down to having a trained and certified operator controlling the equipment and following professional standards, not a teen tanning ban.

The key is moderation and who controls the equipment.

Visit the JCTA website to learn more about the misconceptions of a teen tanning ban.