Study definitively links indoor tanning to skin cancer

If you frequent an indoor tanning salon, listen up: Your risk of getting melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer, is 75 percent greater than for people who don’t tan indoors.

In addition, the more time that people spend at tanning salons, the greater their risk of acquiring melanoma.

These are the results from a case-control research study involving more than 2,200 people.

“Indoor tanning is not safe,” said DeAnn Lazovich, a cancer epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota and the study’s lead researcher. “Our results would suggest that it doesn’t matter whether ultra violet radiation comes from the sun or whether it comes from artificial devices, like indoor tanning, that the risk is still the same for developing melanoma.

“And, therefore, exposure to indoor tanning should be avoided, just like exposure to the sun, to reduce the risk of melanoma.”

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