State Rep. Jim Townsend, D-Royal Oak, sponsors legislation that would prohibit minors from using indoor tanning booths. Currently, anyone under 18 needs parental permission to go to a tanning salon.
If Townsend's new bill becomes law, Michigan would become the fourth state, after California, New York, Vermont, to make tanning illegal for minors.
Repeated studies show that, especially for anyone under 35, tanning can increase the risk of cancer. Or maybe that's just what they want you to think. The tanning industry thinks this all may be a plot by the World Health Organization and dermatologists.
Businessweek: For its first order of business, the tanning trade group is taking on the World Health Organization. The agency has concluded that sun beds increase the risk of melanoma in people younger than 30 by 75 percent, based on a review of 19 studies, and has labeled indoor tanning “carcinogenic to humans.” But Doug McNabb, owner of Calgary-based Fabutan Sun Tan Studios and a Canadian liaison to the new tanning lobby’s board, says salons aren’t to blame for that increased chance of contracting cancer. The real source of risk comes from at-home tanning beds or medical doses of UV light for skin conditions such as psoriasis, he says. A study supporting his conclusion was funded by the Vitamin D Alliance, a group McNabb says receives its money from tanning salons. The findings are “in the process of being published,” he adds.
Well, yeah, compared to industry-funded studies, the WHO seems like a pretty disreputable group. it's not like industry lobbyists would ever misstate the truth.
McClatchy: In two letters to the FTC, [California state Sen. Ted] Lieu argued that the American Suntanning Association should be bound by a 2010 FTC order that prohibited a similar group called the Indoor Tanning Association from making “false health and safety claims about indoor tanning,” such as denying the skin cancer risks of tanning or declaring that indoor tanning is safer than tanning outdoors.
In a settlement with the federal agency, the Indoor Tanning Association agreed to stop misrepresenting tests or studies and to halt deceptive advertisements.Lieu says the newly established American Suntanning Association is composed of many of the same members as the Indoor Tanning Association and shouldn’t be allowed to make statements that the FTC already has ruled false or misleading.
And let's not forget that the freedom to tan is all about creating more and better jobs. According to one website, tanning creates 2,400 jobs in New Jersey alone. Jobs are all important. Surely, in this economy, a little melanoma among the under-35 set is a small price to pay for all those jobs...and skin that looks like charred ground round.
Who doesn't want that?
