Are UV rays in tanning beds really safe?

Main Category: Melanoma / Skin Cancer
Article Date: 25 Apr 2004 - 0:00 PDT

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Michele Hoard has stayed away from tanning beds and out of the sun since she was diagnosed with malignant melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer, in January 2003. But when she heard that a tanning salon near her home in Minneapolis was offering a sunless, spray-on self-tanner, she decided that it was worth finding out more about the tanning alternative.

"I walked in and asked the guy at the front desk about it, and he recommended instead that I go into one of the tanning beds for 10 minutes before trying the spray," recalls Hoard, 35. "I said, 'I can't tan; I'm a melanoma survivor."

His response floored her.

"He just waved his hand and said, 'No worries--the tanning beds are good for you because they contain mostly UVA rays, which reduce your risk of cancer.' I couldn't believe he was advocating tanning to someone who'd had skin cancer."

Lisa Whitehead, now 42, bought an indoor-tanning membership and started going every other day because "the manager told me that the beds were FDA-approved and that the indoor rays were safer than the sun because all the bad, cancer-causing agents were filtered out," she says. Four years later, she noticed a black spot on her upper arm and decided it had to be a beauty mark.

"I didn't really think about it until a few months later, when I went to see my dermatologist and she told me I needed to have it biopsied," Whitehead recalls. Two days later, she learned that she had stage 1 melanoma--at age 27.

"I went back into the tanning salon and screamed at them," says Whitehead, now married with two children. "I told them that they had lied and that their beds had given me cancer."

Hoard and Whitehead are not alone. In an investigation into the $5 billion tanning salon industry, Prevention has found that hard-sell tactics and false assurances of safety are luring women into putting themselves at risk for cancer, disfigurement, and worse.

Not only do some industry representatives claim that tanning is safe; they also insist that soaking up ultraviolet radiation from sunlamps is actually good for you. Read on for what you must know to protect yourself--or your teenage daughter--from this dangerous misinformation.

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