Tanning Bedlam – The Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society

Advertisements for tanning salons fail to acknowledge that ultraviolet-emitting tanning devices are classified by the International Agency for Cancer Research as a Group 1 agent that can cause cancer in humans. Other Group 1 carcinogens include tobacco smoke, smokeless tobacco, asbestos, plutonium, and radon. Efforts by by the American Cancer Society and the American Academy of Dermatology to discourage the use of tanning beds have had little impact on college students or teenagers. The increase in melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer, has paralleled the rise in tanning bed use, not unlike the dramatic rise in lung cancer in the 20th century as cigarette smoking increased. This exhibition presents a historical overview of the use and promotion of sunlamps and tanning beds.

“Tanning doubles cancer risk”

Article by Wayne Grayson
The Crimson White (Student newspaper of the University of Alabama)

September 19, 2007

100,000

cases of melanoma, the most aggressive and deadly form of skin cancer, are diagnosed in the United States each year.

7,200

estimated deaths are attributed to melanoma each year in the United States.

“Surgeon General: Indoor, outdoor tanning must stop”

Article by Alicia Ault
Family Practice News

August, 2014

38%

of college-age women visit tanning salons regularly, in spite of increasing evidence that this practice is now considered the foremost avoidable causative factor in the rising incidence of melanoma.

visit to a tanning salon increases the risk of risk of any form of skin cancer.

“Experts link tanning beds to cancer”

Article by Lydia Sebol Avant
The Tuscaloosa News

July 20, 2009

Heliotherapy, or the therapeutic use of sunlight, was common to ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman civilizations. The Assyrians and Incas, among other populations, regarded the sun as a healthful god.

(Indoors, mankind relied for millennia on candles and oil lamps for light. Gaslight was invented in the 1790s and flourished in the 19^th century until the development of commercial electric lighting and Tomas Edison’s reliable incandescent light bulb in the 1870s.)

In 1666 English physicist Isaac Newton demonstrated with prisms that clear white light is composed of seven colors that make up the visible spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. In 1801 German physician Johann Ritter discovered “ultra-“violet light, energy beyond the violet end of the visible spectrum of light.

The sun emits ultraviolet radiation. Long-wave ultra-violet light, or UVA, which is not filtered by the earth’s ozone layer, penetrates deeply into the skin causing disruption of DNA that can lead to cancer and aging of the skin. Medium-wave ultraviolet rays—or UVB—are mostly absorbed by the ozone layer and atmosphere. UVB helps form Vitamin D in humans but causes skin burns.

In 1903 Danish physician Niels Ryberg Finsen was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology for his use of concentrated beams of ultraviolet light in the treatment of the skin condition lupus vulgaris. The medical applications of ultraviolet radiation increased with the invention of the ultraviolet lamp at the turn of the 20^th century. During World War I a German physician Kurt Huldschinsky used ultraviolet-emitting lamps in the successful treatment of children with the bone disease rickets. Researchers later showed that the disease was caused by a deficiency of Vitamin D. The terms “health lamp” and “sun lamp” were introduced to treat a variety of ailments from depression to diabetes.

Unfortunately, beginning in the 1920s the use of ultraviolet lamps in medical treatments also led to the promotion of these devices for the cosmetic purpose of getting a tan, in spite of the harm that such non-medical applications could cause. Through the decades, manufacturers of UV lamps reduced but did not eliminate the amount of emitted UVB light. The world’s first tanning salon opened in Germany in 1977, and the phenomenon spread to the United States the following year. There are now more than 18,500 tanning salons in the US.

For centuries, a pale complexion was cultivated by the aristocracy to distinguish it from ruddy-faced common laborers.

Beginning in the late 18th century, the Industrial Revolution shifted the workforce from farming to factories often in dense urban settings. The lack of sun exposure was found to cause health problems, notably the lack of Vitamin D that could result in the deforming bone disease rickets. The artificial ultraviolet light lamp was invented in the 1890s and used to prevent vitamin D deficiency in children and factory workers alike.

Such beneficial applications were touted in medical journal advertisements for the next fifty years (and artificial ultraviolet light therapy still plays a significant role in the treatment of psoriasis).

1769 - Joseph Ducreux - Marie Antoinette

Miniature Portrait of Marie Antoinette

Joseph Ducreux
1769

The term “sun lamp” was coined in the 1920s, and Parisian fashion designer Coco Chanel helped popularize tanning as a mark of the leisure class who could vacation on the Riviera and did not toil in factories. Although an advertisement for a sun lamp in the 1930s would claim that it was safe for the whole family, by then it had been discovered that laboratory rats exposed to ultraviolet light bulbs developed skin cancer.

Hanovia Lamps for Light Therapy

Journal of the American Medical Association
December 14, 1929

General Electric Sunlamp Advertisement

Journal of the American Medical Association
December 14, 1929

n.d. - General Electric Sun Lamp - GE Sun Lamp Stands Like The Sun

1948 - 04 - 03 - The Medical Journal Of Australia - Hanovia The New Hanovia Alpine Sun Model VIII Clinical Ultraviolet Ray Lamp

1931 - 01 - Hygeia - The Alpine Sun Lamp - Even If You Can't Go South You Can Still Give Your Children The Benefits Of Summer Sunshine Right At Home

1930 - 10 - 04 - Journal Of The American Medical Association - Helioglass Ultraviolet Ray Glass

1930 - 02 - 01 - The Literary Digest - The Hanovia Alpine Sun Lamp - Get The Facts About Ultraviolet Rays

1928 - 06 - 02 - Alpine Sun Lamp Advertisement - An Urgent New Medical Warning To Parents What Ultraviolet Rays Are And What They Do

Sun lamps were aggressively promoted in major consumer magazines by General Electric and Westinghouse throughout the 1940s and 1950s in advertisements that highlighted the alleged allure of a tan while downplaying health claims. Outdoor tanning became increasingly popular in the 1960s, but in the late-1970s indoor tanning emerged in Europe before being introduced in the US in 1979. The incidence of melanoma has been steadily increasing ever since. Today there are more than 18,500 commercial tanning salons.

According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, women who use tanning beds even once are six times likelier to develop melanoma in their 20s than women who have never used a tanning bed.

(Source: https://www.schweigerderm.com/skin-care-articles/skin-cancer/tanning-beds/#)

Although virtually all college students who use tanning beds are aware that the devices increase the chances of getting skin cancer, most students also believe that everything causes cancer and that tanning bed use is no more risky than many other habits.

Upwards of 31%-39% of students who use tanning beds may be addicted to tanning.

College newspapers are a key advertising medium for tanning bed salons. Literature reviews, internet searches, and personal communications have failed to identify any college newspapers that have either stopped accepting ads for commercial tanning salons or editorially urged students to avoid tanning beds.

“Palm Beach Tan – Welcome Back Crimson Tide!”

Advertisement
The Crimson White

September 4, 2014

“Melanoma”

Cancer prevention advertisement
Women’s Health

2013

“You can’t get your beauty sleep in a tanning bed”

Health promotion advertisement
Women’s Health

2013

VersaSpa – FAQ

Promotional Material
Palm Beach Tan Mailer

A Guide to Achieve Perfect Sunless Color

Promotional Material
Palm Beach Tan Mailer

“Yes I Mystic–Sunless Tanning FAQ’s”

Promotional Material
Palm Beach tan mailer

2014

Not only does the tanning bed industry downplay the magnitude of risks from the use of these devices (akin to the tobacco industry’s denial for decades of the dangers of cigarettes), but it also insists that they provide healthful benefits such as increased Vitamin D.

Tanning beds emit 12 times more ultraviolet A radiation (UVA, with a longer wave length that penetrates the skin more deeply, disrupts DNA, and causes premature aging and wrinkling) than sunlight.

of tanning bed radiation released is ultraviolet B. UVB burns the upper layers of the skin and increases the chances of getting skin cancer.

Bronze Bodies and Black Lungs: Five Analogies that Reveal How the Tanning and Tobacco Industries are the Same

Article
Charles A. Brodine
Melanoma Research Alliance
May 17, 2019

View the one-hour video overview of tanning beds and skin cancer, presented by Alan Blum, MD

70%

of the 28 million tanning bed users are young white women, arms and legs are the most common sites of melanoma in this age group (in whom there has been a 7-fold increase in melanoma in the past 40 years).

100,000

new cases of melanoma are expected to be diagnosed in the US in 2020.

7,000

deaths are expected to occur from melanoma in 2020.

Melanoma Risk Factors

Light skin
Family history
Childhood sunburns
Sensitive skin, including freckles
Blue/green eyes
Red/blonde hair
Moles

Tanning Bed Risks

Melanoma
Squamous cell carcinoma
Basal cell carcinoma
Burns
Allergic reactions
Immune suppression
Injuries to skin/eyes
Premature aging of skin

In the US 17 states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws that ban the use of tanning beds by minors under 18. The notorious case in 2012 of New Jersey’s “tanaholic mom,” who took her 5-year old child with her to the tanning salon, led to the passage in 2013 of a ban in that state on the use of commercial tanning salons by children and teenagers. In Australia, which has the world’s highest incidence of melanoma, commercial tanning bed establishments have been banned in all states and territories since 2016.

Curated by Alan Blum, MD

Professor,
Department of Family Medicine
Gerald Leon Wallace, MD, Endowed Chair in Family Medicine
College of Community Health Sciences
Director, Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society
The University of Alabama

Designed by Kevin Bailey, MA

Collections Manager and Digital Archivist
Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society
The University of Alabama

Assisted by Courtney Kaderbek, B.A. (2014)

Catherine J. Randall Research Scholars Program
University of Alabama.