- Getting a tan is dangerous
- Tanning has caused an epidemic of skin cancer
- Every ray of UV light from a tanning bed increases your risk of contracting melanoma skin cancer
- Tanning beds are 15 times stronger than the sun
- There is no such thing as a responsible tan
- You can get enough Vitamin D through supplements or drinking milk
- Tanning doesn't protect you from getting a burn on vacation
- Indoor tanning is more dangerous than tanning in the sun
Every ray of UV light from a tanning bed increases your risk of contracting melanoma skin cancer
The “C” word is scary. Nobody knows that more than the billion-dollar sunscreen industry, which has systematically attempted to link sun exposure to cancer in an effort to deceptively scare people into buying their products. But despite their best efforts to link tanning to melanoma, no clear link exists. In fact, more than 18 separate peer-reviewed scientific studies indicate that there is no link between tanning indoors and melanoma.
That should put the debate about tanning and cancer to rest, but the sunscreen industry knows that the fear of cancer is the driving force selling their product. As a result, they have taken to quietly funding front groups with deceptive names like the Skin Cancer Foundation and the Sun Safety Alliance to keep the myth of tanning and cancer planted in the minds of the media and, ultimately, their consumers.
Ironically, emerging research (may require login) indicates that sunscreen does nothing to protect against contracting melanoma. The industry is effectively selling a problem in search of a solution that they don’t even have.
In the meantime, the law of unintended consequences reveals that the sunscreen industry’s message of UV abstinence may have backfired when it comes to preventing cancer.
A recent study in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences determined that the risks of not getting enough UV light far outweighed the hypothetically minute risk of skin cancer. That’s because getting a healthy tan naturally produces vitamin D, which has been linked to significantly decreasing your risk of contracting internal cancers like lung, kidney, or liver cancer.
While getting too much sun has been linked to some forms of cancer, indoor tanning is a government-approved, controlled environment designed to give you a tan without ever burning—which is the likely culprit in contracting cancer from sun exposure.
The bottom line is clear: the risks of not getting enough vitamin D outweighs the hypothetical risks of UV light exposure.