As someone who deals quite a bit with people who have been given false information about the law, I find it pretty alarming how often it's taken as gospel truth by those who hear or read it. For example, I've heard more and more lately about how safe it is to visit a tanning salon.
Tanning salons present an interesting problem because they're subject to very little regulation. Because of this, the tanning industry can get away with making false claims about the hazard salons pose. Here, I'll explain the links that both the scientific and medical communities have made between tanning salons and skin cancer, as well as what your options are, should you find yourself suffering from an injury as the result of indoor tanning.
Are Tanning Salons Dangerous?
While the tanning industry has made several claims to the contrary, it's important to know that organizations such as the Federal Trade Commission, the American Medical Association, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the American Academy of Dermatology have all made statements saying that indoor tanning can pose a substantial risk to your health.
The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer categorizes close to a thousand different agents based on how carcinogenic they are to humans. The categories are as follows:
- Group 1: Carcinogenic to humans
- Group 2A: Probably carcinogenic to humans
- Group 2B: Possibly carcinogenic to humans
- Group 3: Not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans
- Group 4: Probably not carcinogenic to humans
***Specific definitions of what each of these groups means can be found here.
In 2009, the IARC announced that it had moved tanning beds to its highest risk category: "carcinogenic to humans." In an interview with WebMD, Dr. Vincent Cagliano, the former acting director of the IARC's Monographs program, which helped to identify environmental factors that increase the risk of cancer, said that medical studies conducted over the past several years had provided more than enough evidence to prove the role tanning beds play in developing skin cancer, despite the tanning industry's many claims that the bulbs it uses in tanning beds are safe, and can even improve an individual's health. The scientific community's answer on this topic has been unequivocal: indoor tanning is dangerous.
Medical Science
Everyone knows that the sun emits radiation that can be harmful to us. But not many know that the sun doesn't only emit radiation, it emits several different kinds of radiation. The kinds relevant to our discussion are known as UVA, UVB, and UVC, where "UV" stands for ultraviolet. The difference between these three has to do with the wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum each operates on. UVA is the longest of the three, with UVB and UVC coming next in line. While UVC light is absorbed by the atmosphere and doesn't reach the surface, UVA and UVB do, and are capable of causing all sorts of health problems. These include premature skin aging, problems seeing, damage to the immune system, and, of course, skin cancer.
While it's long been known that UVA radiation penetrated human skin more deeply than UVB, it wasn't thought to play a large role in the formation of skin cancer. However, in the past 20 years, studies have shown that this belief has been somewhat misguided. It is now believed that, not only does UVA light contribute to the development of skin cancer, it may be one of the factors that triggers it.
Why is this important? Well, UVA is the light that's primarily emitted by the bulbs used in tanning beds. According to skincancer.org, these bulbs can emit as much as 12 times the UVA light as the sun does. So it's not surprising to learn that those who use tanning beds more than double their chances of developing squamous cell carcinoma, and are 1.5 times more like to develop basal cell carcinoma. Not only that, but a young person's first exposure to a tanning bed can increase their risk of getting melanoma by 75%. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, those who use indoor tanning salons have a 59% increased risk of melanoma.
Medical science has now been able to draw a direct line between using a tanning bed and getting skin cancer. Medical journal JAMA Dermatology released a study that found that there are now more cases of cancer because of indoor tanning than there are lung cancer because of smoking. These trends have contributed to the FDA announcing that, going forward, it would require sunlamps used in tanning salons to carry a warning saying that the product shouldn't be used by children under 18. The advisory committee reporting to the USDA had originally recommended that use of tanning beds by teens be banned outright, but you take what you can get, I suppose.
Regulation
As I said before, tanning salons are subject to very little regulation. At the federal level, the FDA and the FTC handle regulation for sunlamps and other tanning devices. The FDA enforces regulation dealing with performance standards for tanning devices, as well as how they're labeled and manufactured. The FTC deals with advertising which is deceptive or misleading.
Once we reach the state level, regulation becomes much murkier. Right now, less than 30 states regulate their respective tanning industries. Of those that do, several don't regulate how tanning equipment is registered and used, or even the training of those who operate the equipment. Some states, such as California and Vermont, ban the use of tanning beds by those under 18. Other states, like North Carolina and Maine, only ban those under 14. Parental accompaniment laws are in effect in only 17 states, with close to 65% percent affecting only minors under 14. Fewer than 21 states mandate the use of protective eyewear while using a tanning bed.
What Happens if You're Injured by a Tanning Bed?
Many injury cases involving tanning beds are products liability cases. This means that the victim was sold or used a product (the tanning bed) that was in some way defective, and caused them to be injured. In these cases, liability might fall back on the manufacturer, as it was their job to make a safe device that was fit for public use, or the tanning salon itself, if it's found that they hadn't done the proper maintenance on the bed to make sure it was safe.
Cases against tanning salons don't end with products liability cases. There are also cases of fraud that need to be examined. While the science linking the use of tanning beds to skin cancer is clear, the tanning industry spends a considerable amount of time and money trying to convince people that this isn't the case. For example, the Indoor Tanning Association has claimed that tanning helps the body to produce Vitamin D, which helps prevent cancer. While UVB radiation is needed to produce Vitamin D in the skin, a person can get all they need just by being outside, even while wearing sunscreen. As a matter of fact, medical professionals often calculate a recommended daily intake of vitamin D based on minimal exposure to sunlight. Doctors actually recommend that you get most of your vitamin D from the food you eat.
So while the statement that tanning helps in the production of vitamin D isn't outright false, it's misleading in that it fails to warn the consumer of the dangers associated with spending that much time in a tanning bed, and letting them know that there are other, healthier ways to increase the vitamin D intake. In addition to this, tanning salons have made claims touting the benefits to one's health that can be brought about by indoor tanning, despite the lack of any scientific evidence backing them up. Making claims such as this, and more so, using them as part of a business strategy would constitute fraud, which a tanning salon could potentially be held liable for.
Lastly, tanning salons can be held liable whenever they fail to properly warn their customers about the dangers inherent in indoor tanning. While misleading statements about tanning can definitely be considered a part of this, it also includes not displaying the black-box warnings the FDA mandated that all sunlamps used in salons carry starting in May of 2014.
In the end, cases involving tanning salons can be highly complex. The tanning industry has shown that it's willing to spend a lot of time and effort defending its ability to mislead and ultimately harm its customers. We take issue with that kind of deception, and we're more than willing to go to bat for anyone who suffered because of it.