With Spring Break 2011 safely in our rear view mirror and summertime fast approaching, many young people have already turned their fleeting attention to looking healthy, tanned and buff in that new bathing suit, conveniently forgetting once again that spending way too much time in a tanning booth can be very problematic for their health -- think skin cancer -- down the road.
If you're a parent, grandparent or someone who just happens to spend lots of time in the company of young people as I do, part of our job this time of year is to bother a few of them very loudly and sometimes embarrassingly about why they feel the need to bake their skin so soon -- evidence of spending way too much time at indoor tanning salons -- especially since summer is right around the corner. Before you give up trying to talk any sense into those young know-it-alls, I urge you to review a pair of studies that found their way to my web browsers of choice (Firefox 4.0, Google Chrome 10 and Safari 5) that underscore the problems with ignoring the tanning salon problem.
Perhaps, most alarming is a recent finding that young non-Hispanic Caucasian girls and women (age 15-39) living in more prosperous socioeconomic neighborhoods were almost six times more likely to be diagnosed with malignant melanoma than their peers living on the poorer side of town. Or, according to background information, that the age-adjusted incidence of cutaneous melanoma among adolescents more than doubled over a 30-year period (1973-2004).
Of course, you may not feel the need to say anything, because local and state legislators have seen these scary numbers too and may have enacted age-based restrictions on teens using tanning booths. Unfortunately, an analysis has found that these state laws have done little to restrict their use among teens. Perhaps, the heart of the problem lies with parents who give their permission expressly or tacitly by mimicking their teen's tanning behaviors.
One expert points out that most of the skin damage that leads to melanoma happens before age 20. The good news: This problem is very preventable with the right sunscreen strategy.
Archives of Dermatology March 21, 2011
ScienceDaily March 21, 2011
healthfinder.gov March 21, 2011
American Journal of Public Health March 18, 2011
Bloomberg Businessweek March 17, 2011