Indoor tanning still accessible to young people – despite bans

Despite legislation prohibiting the use of ultraviolet (UV) indoor tanning facilities by minors, one in every five tanning salons in US states where such bans are in place stated over the phone that they would allow an underaged caller to do so. Many others provide inaccurate health information about indoor tanning, says Leah Ferrucci, of the Yale School of Public Health in the US. She led a studyin Springer’s journal Translational Behavioral Medicine.

Research has shown that indoor tanning increases a person’s risk of developing different types of skin cancer. In the US alone, up to 400 000 skin cancer cases are attributed to indoor tanning. The risk of contracting the disease is higher for people who have been using such facilities frequently from a young age. Effort is therefore made to raise awareness about possible dangers among young people, while some states and cities have introduced bans prohibiting minors from using indoor tanning facilities.

Ferrucci’s team set out to assess compliance with these bans, and whether tanning salons provided accurate health information about the dangers and benefits attached to these services. To do so, research assistants posing as potential underaged clients phoned tanning salons in the states of Connecticut, New York, California, Delaware, Hawai’i, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia. These are states in which bans were in place prohibiting people younger than either 17 or 18 years from using indoor tanning facilities at the time the research was conducted.

Read more at Springer

Photo credit: Marco Verch via Wikimedia Commons