Many are well aware that indoor tanning can cause serious diseases like skin cancer because of the use of ultraviolet radiation. However, recent data says aside from melanoma, a very deadly skin cancer type, it also causes major burns bad enough to send people to emergency rooms.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some people who used tanning beds even burned their eyes and some passed out after being inside the machine for too long.
The researchers from CDC collated data from national sample of reports from all emergency rooms around the whole country. There are about 405 reports of indoor tanning related injuries from 66 hospitals. When they extrapolated the garnered data to the whole population, they estimated that averagely, approximately 3,200 people have suffered from indoor tanning injury every year. That is from 2003 to 2012 in the United States.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Gery Guy and his co-researchers wrote in their report, "Most patients were treated in the ED (emergency department) and released, not requiring hospitalization. However, burns severe enough to warrant an ED visit clearly indicate overexposure to UV radiation and increase skin cancer risk." Their study was published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association JAMA Internal Medicine.
However, by 2012, the data and reports of incidents dropped to about 1,957 a year, the researchers noted. For most of the injuries, 80% are burns, 10% fainted and under 6% got their eyes burned.
Hence, health and federal officials are discouraging indoor tanning among constituents. However, it is still a very popular activity for both men and women to achieve their desired skin color. From the data of CDC, about more than a quarter high school girls and close to a quarter young adults use tanning beds and salons.
The United States Food and Drug Administration is recommending that tanning beds should have a health warning to caution users of the possible adverse side effects of tanning indoors using ultraviolet rays.
