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"Rianne Tasy, a 23-year-old software salesperson in New Brunswick, New Jersey, is blond and bronzed. Very bronzed. She&amp;amp;#8217;s been hitting a tanning bed four or five times a month for seven years. And she has no plans to give it up, despite hearing about a 2009 report confirming that using the beds before the age of 30 may increase your risk of melanoma by 75 percent. &amp;amp;#8220;The health warnings don&amp;amp;#8217;t scare me,&amp;amp;#8221; says Tasy. &amp;amp;#8220;I don&amp;amp;#8217;t overdo it. For me, it&amp;amp;#8217;s just like going to the gym, using makeup or buying a new outfit&amp;amp;#8212;it makes me feel and look good.&amp;amp;#8221; Tasy isn&amp;amp;#8217;t alone in her determination to tan: In a glamour.com poll, a jaw-dropping 77 percent of tanning bed users who were told about the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) finding said they would continue to indoor-tan. And the industry is booming: There are some 20,000 salons across the country. That&amp;amp;#8217;s more stores than Starbucks operates worldwide! But &amp;amp;#8220;the classification of tanning beds as carcinogenic should remove all doubt about their dangers,&amp;amp;#8221; says Vincent Cogliano, Ph.D., head of the IARC&amp;amp;#8217;s program to identify causes of cancer in humans. So why on earth are women still fake baking? You might be surprised by what we found. Misleading Claims Last fall Glamour sent reporters to check out salons in all four regions of the country: West Coast, Midwest, East Coast and the South. When these women, posing as potential customers, asked about health risks, one tanning staffer confessed that she thought the beds were harmful. Other employees, however, downplayed the risks. Three common statements our reporters heard: The only danger is staying in the booth too long; the beds are better for you than the sun; and some beds have only &amp;amp;#8220;safe&amp;amp;#8221; UVA rays, not ones that burn. In reality, all of these claims are false, according to doctors Glamour spoke to. Why are salons spouting such twisted facts? Dan Humiston, president of the Indoor Tanning Association, a tanning industry and lobbying group, chalks the &amp;amp;#8220;safe&amp;amp;#8221; rays claim up to &amp;amp;#8220;an employee who didn&amp;amp;#8217;t understand exactly what they were talking about.&amp;amp;#8221; But Humiston and the ITA stand firmly behind the idea that tanning bed use is OK in moderation. &amp;amp;#8220;The biggest risk is overexposure,&amp;amp;#8221; he says. &amp;amp;#8220;If you burn, you could be doing damage to yourself&amp;amp;#8212;whether you&amp;amp;#8217;re in the bed or outside.&amp;amp;#8221; In fact, your risk for burning may be higher at a salon than outdoors, says Cogliano: &amp;amp;#8220;The rays are the same, but UV beds emit more intense radiation than sunlight. That&amp;amp;#8217;s why tanning bed sessions are short&amp;amp;#8212;because they can damage your skin faster than being in natural light.&amp;amp;#8221; Many salons also promote the age-old &amp;amp;#8220;base tan&amp;amp;#8221; idea. &amp;amp;#8220;We share with our clients that tanning is the body&amp;amp;#8217;s natural defense mechanism against a burn,&amp;amp;#8221; a 29-year-old tanning salon owner in New Jersey told Glamour. While it&amp;amp;#8217;s true that a slight tan provides a sun protection factor (SPF) of about 4, that&amp;amp;#8217;s much less than the SPF 15 or 30 recommended by experts to protect you from burns, cancer and premature aging. What&amp;amp;#8217;s more, when the skin darkens to try to protect itself&amp;amp;#8212;even slightly&amp;amp;#8212;that change is evidence of damage already taking place within your cells, dermatologists say. &amp;amp;#8220;The &amp;amp;#8216;base tan&amp;amp;#8217; is another gimmick to get people to feel comfortable with the beds,&amp;amp;#8221; says dermatologist Jenny Kim, M.D., an associate professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles. Some salon websites even claim that indoor tanning is good for you. &amp;amp;#8220;Vitamin D production is probably the best-known benefit,&amp;amp;#8221; says Humiston. Yes, vitamin D is essential for health&amp;amp;#8212;and UV rays from the sun or beds trigger the body to produce it. &amp;amp;#8220;But using a tanning bed to get D is like cutting off your nose to spite your face,&amp;amp;#8221; says Ellen Marmur, M.D., chief of the division of dermatologic and cosmetic surgery at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. &amp;amp;#8220;Walking around the neighborhood, doing errands, playing tennis or jogging will give you plenty of UV rays,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. One salon owner told Glamour that using tanning beds can reduce the symptoms of PMS, jet lag and winter blues. But Dr. Kim says those claims are based on a misinterpretation of scientific research. While vitamin D has been linked to decreased PMS symptoms, for example, and exposure to bright light in the eyes can ease jet lag and seasonal depression, our medical experts explained that tanning bed use has not been shown to do any of those. The &amp;amp;#8220;It Can&amp;amp;#8217;t Happen to Me&amp;amp;#8221; Syndrome Of course, you can&amp;amp;#8217;t place all the responsibility on salons. Some women still love the tanning bed look and are willing to accept the risks to get it. &amp;amp;#8220;Sure, initially a tan may look good,&amp;amp;#8221; says Dr. Kim. &amp;amp;#8220;But every time you get UV exposure, you add to the aging process. It damages skin-plumping collagen and elastic fibers that keep skin tight. The patients I see who have tanned look so much older than other people their age. It&amp;amp;#8217;s not a matter of if you will see damage, it&amp;amp;#8217;s a matter of when.&amp;amp;#8221; The biggest tanning bed danger is cancer&amp;amp;#8212;yet some young women feel invincible. &amp;amp;#8220;I use the beds three times a week,&amp;amp;#8221; Texas optician Samone Hillman, 20, told Glamour. &amp;amp;#8220;I think my skin is healthy enough to withstand it, even though my grandfather had melanoma.&amp;amp;#8221; Think cancer can&amp;amp;#8217;t happen to you? Neither did New Yorker Kim Hunt, 36, who Dr. Marmur diagnosed with early-stage melanoma last year. &amp;amp;#8220;I figured if I was only using tanning beds for a couple of minutes at the start of summer, it wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t going to hurt me,&amp;amp;#8221; says Hunt. &amp;amp;#8220;Knowing what I know now, I would never have done it.&amp;amp;#8221; Hunt&amp;amp;#8217;s cancer was removed from her right shoulder, and she&amp;amp;#8217;s now cancer-free&amp;amp;#8212;but there&amp;amp;#8217;s still a chance of recurrence. &amp;amp;#8220;Melanoma is really scary stuff, and believe me, you don&amp;amp;#8217;t want to get that call from your doctor,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. &amp;amp;#8220;If you&amp;amp;#8217;re still using tanning beds, you have to ask yourself: Is it worth the risk?&amp;amp;#8221; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/2010/03/the-beauty-habit-that-can-give-you-cancer>