Tanning booths appeal to one in three people in the world, nearly one in two in Europe. But UV lamps cause 1,450,000 skin cancers per year, according to a large study.
Tanning beds may kill more cancer than smoking. This is in any case what reveals a large study published in the journal Jama Dermatology. In fact, it is a publication which has collected the results of 88 studies carried out on the subject, thus bringing together data from more than 400,000 people in Europe, the United States and Australia. According to the authors of this work, young populations are particularly at risk.
To assess the popularity of these artificial tanning centers and quantify the risk of skin cancer that they induce, these researchers analyzed the results of these studies carried out between 1992 and 2013. They were thus able to calculate both the risk of melanoma, the most aggressive skin cancer, but also the risk of non-melanoma type skin cancer.
In the end, this team shows that more than 450,000 non-melanoma-type skin cancers and more than 10,000 melanomas are attributable each year to tanning beds around the world. “Even though the mortality associated with lung cancer is far greater than that of skin cancer, what worries us is that artificial tanning is increasingly popular,” the authors said.
As smoking rates are declining in Western countries, it is possible that the number of skin cancers caused by tanning beds will eventually exceed that of lung cancer in the years to come ”.
Europe particularly fond of tanning booths
Although the results of this study reveal that on average 3 in 10 adults in the world have already been exposed at least once in their life to this type of artificial UV rays, it also reveals that this attraction to tanning booths does not occur. is not uniform across geographic regions. It is in Northern and Western Europe that this prevalence of frequentation is the highest with 41.6% of adults having already tanned in this type of device. In the United States and Canada, they would be 35.4%, while Australia comes at the back of the pack with only 10.7% of adults having ever used a tanning booth.
Young people particularly concerned
But what worries the authors even more, all countries combined, is that young people are particularly numerous to have already tried the experience. In fact, in this survey, 55% of university students and 19.3% of adolescents have been exposed at least once in their life to a UV lamp. “Because the risk of melanoma and other skin cancers is higher in people exposed to indoor tanning early in life, the fact that we have found that many students and adolescents have already been exposed is very concerning,” the authors conclude. The rate of skin cancer in this very sensitive group is expected to be even higher in the coming decades ”.
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