To Bronze or Not to Bronze

The special shade of orange that one’s skin adopts after a meeting with a tanning bed is hard to miss. It isn’t particularly appealing, and it definitely doesn’t seem healthy. After all, who really wants to look like Snooki or The Situation from “The Jersey Shore”?

Despite my personal dislike for the salon-tanning phenomenon, thousands of people continue to frequent tanning salons. The government has taken steps to restrict tanning bed use, like introducing a tax on tanning, and the Food and Drug Administration may even go further to ban those under 18 from tanning bed use. While the tanning bed tax is a great step in the right direction towards discouraging people from using these harmful devices, the FDA’s potential ban on minors’ use of them seems like an overstepping of boundaries because of its infringement of individual rights.

In July 2009, experts at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon—the cancer branch of the World Health Organization—published in the medical journal Lancet Oncology their research stating that tanning beds and other sources of ultraviolet radiation are causes of cancer. Tanning beds are now considered to be as deadly as arsenic and mustard gas.

In fact, the risk of skin cancer increases by about 75 percent in those who begin use of tanning beds before the age of 30. Skin cancer rates are usually highest in people above the age of 75, but melanoma is now the leading type of cancer diagnosed in women in their 20s in Britain, which provides a parallel rise in the use of tanning beds in people under 30 and increased cancer patient numbers.

Given these statistics, it seems incredibly unwise to subject oneself to concentrated UV rays on purpose. We don’t go around smearing ourselves with arsenic, do we? But if people won’t stop frequenting tanning salons and turning into lobsters, even when they are aware of the health risks, the best thing is for the government to tighten tanning bed restrictions.

The recently passed health care bill introduces a 10 percent tax on indoor tanning services. Dr. June Robinson, a clinical professor of dermatology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, tells the New York Times that the dream is that this tax will work to decrease tanning bed usage much as prior taxes on addictive substances like tobacco and alcohol have decreased usage of those taxed items. The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation also estimates that the tax will raise $2.7 billion over 10 years in hopes of offsetting some of the cost of providing health insurance for millions more Americans. This sounds like a win-win situation: discourage tanning bed use and decrease the expense of more universal health care.

But for the government to go further and to ban those under 18 from using tanning beds is not only a little ridiculous but also too much of an encroachment of individual rights. People under 18 are already exposed to UV radiation on a daily basis, so banning tanning bed use would be like banning frolicking in the sun for extended periods of time without sunscreen use—a clearly ludicrous idea. To some extent, the absorption of harmful UV rays are a more natural part of our existence on this planet, unlike tobacco and alcohol consumption, so a ban on tanning beds would not be quite the same as taking away a young person’s right to smoke or drink.

The panel of advisors to the FDA that recommended this potential ban also suggested requiring parental consent forms. This means of restrictions is much more reasonable than a full-out ban. Minors should be able to maintain the right to too much UV radiation exposure, even if they are aware of the cancer risks, as apparently 40 to 60 percent of surveyed teenaged girls did. Let them risk cancer if they must—it’s not like they haven’t been warned.

Ayse Baybars ’12, a Crimson editorial writer, is a chemistry concentrator in Lowell House.