Skin Cancer Keeps Rising

October 9, 2012 | Mad Science

Despite the word being put out about the dangers of the indoor-tan, the trend toward looking like an orangutan sunset continues.

A team at UC San Francisco analyzed 12 studies that included more than 9,000 cases of non-melanoma skin cancer, such as basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma.

The use of tanning beds was associated with a two-thirds increased risk of squamous cell carcinoma and a one-third higher risk of basal cell carcinoma, compared with never using a tanning bed, the researchers found. Sure, these may be the least fatal forms of skin cancer, but nobody says “a life-long skin disfigurement? Sign me up”.

Of course, there’s also a melanoma link – the deadliest form of skin cancer, which claims nearly 50,000 lives annually. A University of Minnesota study found that risk was positively correlated with sessions/hours/years spent in human easy-bake ovens.

According to a 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health, Minneapolis (one of the cities mentioned with “long, gray winters”) had 9.93 tanning salons per 100,000 people compared to Miami, which had 5.24 tanning salons per 100,000 people. What’s amazing is that there are any tanning salons in Miami at all.
(Then again, Florida is a weird place. Shark weird news aggregator favorite, FARK.com even has a “Florida” category – According to an editor there, “Other states have odd stories come out of them, but no state can challenge Florida. It’s the heavyweight champion of weirdness.”)

Luckily, celebrities (speaking of UV rays -they frequently think the sun shines out of their arses) have been getting the word out about alternatives – self-marinading with spray tan (the less benign dangers of which can be seen here in this list – Hollywood’s Worst Self Tanners).

An American Academy of Dermatology rep, however, offers these spray tan suggestions for those interested in basting themselves like radioactive turkeys…proceed with caution:

Wear goggles or close your eyes.
Put cotton in your nose.
Put Vaseline or petroleum jelly around your closed lips
Take a deep breath and hold it before spraying near your face.
Use rub on tanning lotions for touch ups to cut down on the times you are exposed to spray tans.
And the person doing the spraying should wear a protective mask.