Study: Tanning beds can be as deadly as arsenic

[The Spartan]

MSNBC.com

Study: Tanning beds as deadly as arsenic
Cancer risk jumps 75 percent if ultraviolet radiation device used before 30
The Associated Press
updated 6:01 p.m. CT, Tues., July 28, 2009
LONDON - International cancer experts have moved tanning beds and other sources of ultraviolet radiation into the top cancer risk category, deeming them as deadly as arsenic and mustard gas.

For years, scientists have described tanning beds and ultraviolet radiation as "probable carcinogens."

A new analysis of about 20 studies concludes the risk of skin cancer jumps by 75 percent when people start using tanning beds before age 30. Experts also found that all types of ultraviolet radiation caused worrying mutations in mice, proof the radiation is carcinogenic. Previously, only one type of ultraviolet radiation was thought to be lethal.

The new classification means tanning beds and other sources of ultraviolet radiation are definite causes of cancer, alongside tobacco, the hepatitis B virus and chimney sweeping, among others.

The research was published online in the medical journal Lancet Oncology on Wednesday, by experts at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization.

"People need to be reminded of the risks of sunbeds," said Vincent Cogliano, one of the cancer researchers. "We hope the prevailing culture will change so teens don't think they need to use sunbeds to get a tan."

Most lights used in tanning beds give off mainly ultraviolet radiation, which cause skin and eye cancer, according to the International Agency for Cancer Research.

The classification of tanning beds as carcinogenic was disputed by Kathy Banks, chief executive of The Sunbed Association, a European trade association of tanning bed makers and operators.

"The fact that is continuously ignored is that there is no proven link between the responsible use of sunbeds and skin cancer," Banks said in a statement. She said most users of tanning beds use them less than 20 times a year.

But as use of tanning beds has increased among people under 30, doctors have seen a parallel rise in the numbers of young people with skin cancer. In Britain, melanoma, the deadliest kind of skin cancer, is now the leading cancer diagnosed in women in their 20s. Normally, skin cancer rates are highest in people over 75.

Previous studies found younger people who regularly use tanning beds are eight times more likely to get melanoma than people who have never used them. In the past, WHO warned people younger than 18 to stay away from tanning beds.

Cogliano cautioned that ultravoilet radiation is not healthy, whether it comes from a tanning bed or from the sun. The American Cancer Society advises people to try bronzing or self-tanning creams instead of tanning beds.

HA! Do you know how many people I know who tan and insist that it's okay because it's a tanning bed and not the sun?

Idiots!

[Ziggy Stardust]

The classification of tanning beds as carcinogenic was disputed by Kathy Banks, chief executive of The Sunbed Association, a European trade association of tanning bed makers and operators.

"The fact that is continuously ignored is that there is no proven link between the responsible use of sunbeds and skin cancer," Banks said in a statement.

So in response to a proven link she denies that there is a proven link? Typical.

[Tasoth]

So wait, let me try and work this out. Tanning beds work by pumping UV rays directly at you in concentrated format, right? And as far back as I can remember, they warn about wearing sunblock because UV light causes cancer. So how did people not connect these two before?

[The Spartan]

So wait, let me try and work this out. Tanning beds work by pumping UV rays directly at you in concentrated format, right? And as far back as I can remember, they warn about wearing sunblock because UV light causes cancer. So how did people not connect these two before?

The most common response I got was that it was a different kind of UV light that was safe.

[Darth Wong]

So wait, let me try and work this out. Tanning beds work by pumping UV rays directly at you in concentrated format, right? And as far back as I can remember, they warn about wearing sunblock because UV light causes cancer. So how did people not connect these two before?

The most common response I got was that it was a different kind of UV light that was safe.

Either that, or something stupid like "Meh, people are always coming out with new studies saying that something gives you cancer. Life is risk. Live with it." Smokers use the same stupid argument.

[Ghost Rider]

Well, at least this will make me laugh when I hear one of them fry themselves into oblivion. Really, it amazes me how much people want to kinda sorta fry themselves, but doing it under the sun? That's bad. Doing it under what amounts to concentrated sunlight with none of the outdoor benefits? That's okay.

[Simon_Jester]

The most common response I got was that it was a different kind of UV light that was safe.

Different... how?

I could see the argument at least being sane if, say, the UV light that has a strong link with cancer is relatively high frequency and high energy compared with the stuff in tanning salons. But somehow I doubt that the people making this argument have thought that all the way through. Grumblegrumble deficient education system grumble...

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The "life is risk" people do have at least a drop or two of credible argument mixed in with the stupid. There's a problem with the way medical study results get reported to the general public that can make it difficult to be sure whether to follow their advice.

The problem starts with a reporting bias in the media that causes a study saying that "X causes cancer" to be reported over studies that say "X cannot be shown to cause cancer." "X causes cancer" is more interesting and important. Therefore it is more newsworthy.

Which would be fine, except that a certain percentage of those studies are going to be wrong- that's what statistical statements like p = .05 mean. Let's say you do twenty studies on the relationship between cancer and a list of completely random things that (in reality) have nothing to do with cancer. The odds are fairly good that one or two of your studies will tell you with p < .05 that yodeling or being named George or something like that causes cancer.

But many or all of the studies that don't show a correlation don't get reported in the national media, and reporters aren't especially likely to check for other research on the same topic when they have a nice sensational story to report. the false positives from the outliers are likely to get thrown in with the true positives.

When you have multiple converging studies showing X repeatedly with p <.05, then the people saying "science proves X!" have a good argument. Or if you have one study with a p value of something like 0.001. Or if your true positive rate is high compared to p.

But the general public is going to have a bit of difficulty finding out the false positive rate on cancer studies and comparing it to the true positive rate, because it depends on knowledge not generally available (such as "how many cancer studies report negative for each study that reports positive?")
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I'd also expect this to be a problem with routine medical testing. If every woman went to the doctor for mammograms every year, if the false positive rate were about 5%*, and if the probability of contracting breast cancer in a given year were about 2%**... the mammograms would be turning up two or three suspicious spots that aren't tumors for every spot that is.

*A very rough average based on the values reported here
** This is a pure guess, but since only a minority of women get breast cancer at all and even they hardly contract it every year, the probability per year isn't going to be large. I suspect that 2% per year would be a high risk of breast cancer by the standards of the population

[OmegaChief]

I'd hope this would be the evidence needed to make people realise how dangerous doing all this to themselves is, but my cynical side says no, they'll just keep on tanning because 'Nothing bad ever happened to me' or 'those are just horror stories'.

What makes it so much worse in my eyes is the amount young people, in some cases lower then the actual age limit, who seem to think a weekly session on these things is a good idea.

[The Spartan]

The most common response I got was that it was a different kind of UV light that was safe.

Different... how?

No one ever had an answer for that.

[Darth Wong]

Most likely the more modern tanning beds used light that was lower in the UV spectrum than the early ones, which would give the photons lower energy levels and thereby make them somewhat less likely to cause damage. But that doesn't mean they're actually safe; it just means they're less destructive per photon than the older tanning beds. Since they probably use the same actual wattage (same watts @ lower energy per photon simply means more photons), I don't know how much of a difference this really makes, if any. They would still be in the ionizing range.

[The Spartan]

Even if they weren't people would end up staying in the damn thing longer to get the same effect.

[The Vortex Empire]

People that use those things are stupid. Seriously, it's the exact same as the sun, except far more powerful. I know people who use those things weekly. Can anyone say skin cancer?

[Vendetta]

A new analysis of about 20 studies concludes the risk of skin cancer jumps by 75 percent when people start using tanning beds before age 30. Experts also found that all types of ultraviolet radiation caused worrying mutations in mice, proof the radiation is carcinogenic. Previously, only one type of ultraviolet radiation was thought to be lethal.

Always be wary of statistics like this. The risk jumping by "75%" is meaningless if you don't know what the risk was otherwise. In 2006 there were around 10,000 diagnosed new cases of skin cancer in Britain, that means that the individual risk to any one person is actually 0.017%. Not actually a very large risk. So this "75% increase", which sounds so huge, actually means a 0.028% risk or thereabouts, so slightly under two in ten thousand. You are three times as likely to be killed or seriously injured in a road accident (3100 deaths, 28,000 serious injuries in 2006 in Britain), and I do not see anyone encouraging us all to become hermits to avoid that risk.

And if we want to look at other preventable lifestyle related diseases, Diabetes kills 33,000 people in Britain per year. The risk of diabetes related death (not just having diabetes itself) is, once more, three times that of catching skin cancer at all.

Moreover, of the 10,000 diagnosed cases of skin cancer, most will not be fatal. There have been around 8100 deaths attributed to skin cancer in britain in the last five years. That's only 1620 a year, only slightly over half as deadly as the country's roads, and an actual risk of 0.0027%, one in thirty five thousand or so, and indicative of only a 16% fatality rate.

But as use of tanning beds has increased among people under 30, doctors have seen a parallel rise in the numbers of young people with skin cancer. In Britain, melanoma, the deadliest kind of skin cancer, is now the leading cancer diagnosed in women in their 20s. Normally, skin cancer rates are highest in people over 75.

That "leading type of cancer", by the way, still only generated 320 cases in the target group in a single year, in a target group of several million at least, making this still an extremely low risk cancer group. (The single leading risk factor for cancer is age).

This kind of article is typical fearmongering, it uses selective reporting of large sounding numbers like "75% risk increase" to make things seem much more dire than they actually are, because people are rubbish at looking at the actual statistics absent the emotional impact of Big Scary Cancer, which short circuits our rational thinking and makes us believe any old numbers, and that includes journalists, which is why it gets in the papers whilst non-photogenic unscary health problems like diabetes go pretty much ignored, whilst they actually kill more and affect the lives of far more people, and their lifestyle causes are far less exotic.

[Simon_Jester]

Different... how?

No one ever had an answer for that.

I was afraid of that.

You are three times as likely to be killed or seriously injured in a road accident (3100 deaths, 28,000 serious injuries in 2006 in Britain) [as to contract skin cancer [due to a tanning parlor]], and I do not see anyone encouraging us all to become hermits to avoid that risk.

Yes, but avoiding road accidents by never going out on the roads is far more difficult than avoiding melanoma by never going to tanning salons. The risk reduction is small, but so is the price you pay to get it.

And if we want to look at other preventable lifestyle related diseases, Diabetes kills 33,000 people in Britain per year. The risk of diabetes related death (not just having diabetes itself) is, once more, three times that of catching skin cancer at all.

I wonder what proportion of the people who are tanning-obsessed enough to fry themselves into melanoma eat badly enough to significantly raise their chances of diabetes. I kind of doubt it's many, because people who are vain about their appearance would seem less likely to be obese, and far more likely to tan themselves religiously.

[Darmalus]

The most common response I got was that it was a different kind of UV light that was safe.

Different... how?

No one ever had an answer for that.

I remember being told by one of the clerks at a tanning salon that there were 3 types of UV light, A, B, and C. UV-B and C were the ones that caused cancer, while UV-A was just light that was barely outside the visible spectrum, and was thus safe. I wasn't going myself, I just asked while some friends did their 30 minutes a week. I didn't question it, as I had no intrest beyond killing time.

[Vendetta]

Yes, but avoiding road accidents by never going out on the roads is far more difficult than avoiding melanoma by never going to tanning salons. The risk reduction is small, but so is the price you pay to get it.

The point is that the risk of melanoma is tiny, and therefore the risk increase from artificial UV sources like tanning is also tiny despite that big scary 75%, and "never going to tanning salons", as well as all the other "told you so, now you've got cancer" responses to this thread are gullible buying into the fear culture, and a complete failure to actually assess the real world risk.

I wonder what proportion of the people who are tanning-obsessed enough to fry themselves into melanoma eat badly enough to significantly raise their chances of diabetes. I kind of doubt it's many, because people who are vain about their appearance would seem less likely to be obese, and far more likely to tan themselves religiously.

Which has what to do with the fact that the much larger risk factor recieves less attention in the media, and is not percieved as a significant risk in the way that cancer is?

Cancer is one of the great modern bogeymen, a supposedly creeping doom that is always on the rise due to the horrors of modern life (like tanning), whereas in reality it's only increasing as a cause of death because we've pretty much gotten licked all the other things that used to kill people before they lived long enough to get cancer. (Once again, the biggest risk factor is age, the highest risk group for melanoma is not young tanned sun chasers but over 70's, so a significant fraction of the rate of melanoma increase will be longer lifespans as well)

[Simon_Jester]

Which has what to do with the fact that the much larger risk factor recieves less attention in the media, and is not percieved as a significant risk in the way that cancer is?

Cancer is one of the great modern bogeymen, a supposedly creeping doom that is always on the rise due to the horrors of modern life (like tanning), whereas in reality it's only increasing as a cause of death because we've pretty much gotten licked all the other things that used to kill people before they lived long enough to get cancer. (Once again, the biggest risk factor is age, the highest risk group for melanoma is not young tanned sun chasers but over 70's, so a significant fraction of the rate of melanoma increase will be longer lifespans as well)

Though we do put more exotic chemical stuff into the atmosphere than we used to, and our diet bears little resemblance to what we evolved eating... so it wouldn't be all that surprising if cancer rates were on the rise.

[Vendetta]

Though we do put more exotic chemical stuff into the atmosphere than we used to, and our diet bears little resemblance to what we evolved eating... so it wouldn't be all that surprising if cancer rates were on the rise.

Once again, completely ignoring the single biggest risk factor for cancer. Age. All that "exotic chemical stuff" in the atmosphere and environment is in tiny concentrations, and the big diet risks are the stuff that we've evolved to "like" we did so because it was uncommon and worth having (Sugars, fats, etc, high energy density foods), but now it's not uncommon, so we eat a lot of it and get fat because our bodies aren't wired for sugar and fat abundance, so they keep yelling out for more. Once more, that doesn't cause cancer, it causes a host of other, far more common and serious problems like heart disease and diabetes.

Those problems do not make the news in the way that Suntans=Cancer do, because they are not "photogenic" enough.

[Simon_Jester]

Once again, completely ignoring the single biggest risk factor for cancer. Age.

I'm should make it clear that I don't think you're wrong about age being the biggest risk factor. I agree that increased life expectancy is a big reason why cancer rates are up compared to a century or two ago. That's pretty much self-evident. Live longer, and your chances of catching any incurable disease some time during your life increase. That's true even if the risk isn't increasing with age. Which, I agree, it is.

But I don't think the explanation for increased cancer rates is only age. There are a lot of biochemical factors too well established as carcinogens to be a coincidence, and they are out there. The individual effects are small, especially now that we've become more alert to the problem, but that doesn't mean the cumulative effect is negligible.

"Biggest risk factor" does not mean "only risk factor." And since it's the one risk factor we can't do anything about except commit suicide before the cancer gets us, worrying about its effects is singularly useless.
_________

Ignoring problems like diabetes and heart failure in favor of cancer is, yes, stupid. But that doesn't make society's concern with carcinogens a red herring.

[Darth Wong]

Cancer is one of the great modern bogeymen, a supposedly creeping doom that is always on the rise due to the horrors of modern life (like tanning), whereas in reality it's only increasing as a cause of death because we've pretty much gotten licked all the other things that used to kill people before they lived long enough to get cancer. (Once again, the biggest risk factor is age, the highest risk group for melanoma is not young tanned sun chasers but over 70's, so a significant fraction of the rate of melanoma increase will be longer lifespans as well)

It's one thing to say that cancer risk increases with age; it's quite another to call it a "bogeyman". All of the studies correlating various unhealthy behaviours to cancer are still valid, which is why only an idiot takes up cigarette smoking (this is why most smokers start when they're teenagers; teenagers are often idiots). It may be inevitable that people eventually get cancer if their cardio-vascular systems don't give out first, but management of your risk factors allows you to reduce the odds of getting it sooner, rather than later.

[Vympel]

There's never been anything healthy about a tan, and thankfully the Australian government has come out putting health ads that say exactly that.

This of course does not stop my parents from insisting I go out and get some sun on me because I'm fair skinned. Because tanning and sunlight is sooooo healthy, you need to be bronzed to really get all the benefits! I simply ignore them.

Most girls I know are luckily aware of this, but still want to be tan, so they just apply the fake stuff.

When did tanning become glamorous, anyway? A while ago being tanned meant you were low class, because you spent all day outside doing physical labour. Funny how attitudes change.

[Darth Wong]

When did tanning become glamorous, anyway? A while ago being tanned meant you were low class, because you spent all day outside doing physical labour. Funny how attitudes change.

Supposedly, it was started by a single celebrity: Coco Chanel. Apparently, we've been celebrity emulators for a loooong time.

[Surlethe]

Well, at least this will make me laugh when I hear one of them fry themselves into oblivion. Really, it amazes me how much people want to kinda sorta fry themselves, but doing it under the sun? That's bad. Doing it under what amounts to concentrated sunlight with none of the outdoor benefits? That's okay.

Absolutely. At least when you go to the beach, you get to enjoy the breeze, the golden sand, the waves lapping up against the shore, wading, sand-castle building, maybe some beach volleyball, and the attractive women in low bikinis. A tanning bed? What do you get then? You go inside to a little room and lie yourself down in a half-open coffin for an hour. Not only does it give you skin cancer in return for shoring up your low self-esteem, it's got to be more boring than an MRI, because in an MRI at least you don't have the high-energy blue glare.

[Darth Wong]

Unfortunately, the tan will always carry a certain appeal, for various reasons. A tan conceals certain imperfections and irregularities in the skin, just as it is easier to spot dirt on a white car than a brown one. It also makes the skin less translucent, so you can't see the veins under the skin. It used to be that people had no problem with visible veins, but people clearly expect each other to have an absolutely even complexion nowadays, and blue veins spoil that.

[Simon_Jester]

When did tanning become glamorous, anyway? A while ago being tanned meant you were low class, because you spent all day outside doing physical labour. Funny how attitudes change.

Supposedly, it was started by a single celebrity: Coco Chanel. Apparently, we've been celebrity emulators for a loooong time.

It may be that like general physical fitness, being tanned got reversed as a sign of class. It used to mean that having lots of muscles and not being fat meant you had to work hard and that you couldn't afford a lot to eat. Nowadays (at least in the US, possibly in other nations) it often means you can afford to eat more expensive, healthier food that isn't laced with corn syrup. And that you can afford to hire a personal trainer or spend an hour or two a day working out because you're not totally burned out by your low-paid retail drone job.

Likewise, having a tan went from a sign that you spent hours in the sun because you had to, to meaning that you could spend hours in the sun because you had free time to spend outdoors during daylight hours. Which the average corporate drone doesn't.
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Another speculative possible explanation:
I've heard it said that people tend to find multiracial features more attractive than monoracial features, all else being equal; putting a tan on pale skin moves you toward that attractive averaged state.

This one is a lot shakier, not least because there have been plenty of cultures that did obsess over monoracial features.