The Food and Drug Administration is debating whether to toughen warnings on tanning beds because of a suspicion they lead to cancer. The pitch for tanning beds has been that they are safer than lying in the sun and do not lead to cancer, but there is an increasing scientific consensus that there is no such thing as a safe tan, no matter what the source.
That is the message that one 18-year-old female received. She was preparing for the Miss Indiana pageant and getting a tan in a tanning salon when she discovered a growth on her leg. It turned out to be an early-stage melanoma, the most danger form of skin cancer. The woman had regularly gone to the tanning beds. It started in sixth-grade when she was a cheerleader. She even owned a tanning bed at one time. No more. She didn’t think the warning label on the tanning bed was meant for her. After all, it was so small, she said, “Nothing to make me stop and think, ‘This is real.’ The melanoma was caught before it spread further.
The World Health Organization has listed tanning beds as a definitive cancer-causer right alongside ultraviolet radiation. Both the sun and the tanning beds emit that form of radiation. Previously it was considered a “probable” carcinogen. The FDA recently decided those small warnings are not strong enough and do not convey the full message. So in March, an FDA advisory panel began public hearings to explore stricter regulations. UV radiation is also linked to basal and squamous cell carcinomas, which affect more than one million Americans a year and kill about 2,000 annually, while melanoma kills about 8,650 annually.
Source Article: http://cbs2.com/health/fda.tanning.beds.2.1433848.html
