• Question: my friend is 13 and wants to go on a sunbed, could youplease tell me the risks and anything i could say to persusde her not to ? thanks x

    Asked by emmaandizzy to Gioia, Iain, Jo, Leo, Mariam on 20 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by hollynsarah, frankie.
    • Photo: Gioia Cherubini

      Gioia Cherubini answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Dear emmaandizzy,

      I think you are a very good friend for worrying about this and I think you are right to be worried! I was simply going to say that I wouldn’t use a sunbed because I don’t want to be exposed unnecessarily to UV rays (those the provoke skin cancer), but then I went on the Cancer Research UK website and I found something that is much more serious!
      “Research shows that first using a sunbed under the age of 35 increases the risk of developing skin cancer by 75 per cent.”
      “At Cancer Research UK we are deeply concerned about how easily sunbeds can be accessed by children and teenagers. Coin-operated sunbeds and unstaffed salons which offer cheap deals – some around 30p a minute – make using sunbeds extremely appealing to young people, especially girls.

      And with the pressure felt by children and teenagers to have a tan, we are concerned that – unless action is taken – young sunbed users will only continue to fuel the dramatic rise in skin cancer rates in the UK.”

      At the moment, they are thinking to pass a law to ban the sunbed if you are below 18.

      Why not trying self-tanning lotions that contain a colourless sugar that interacts with skin cells to produce a colour change. So you actually get tanned and you don’t have that orange colour that makes it obvious that you are faking it?!

    • Photo: Mariam Orme

      Mariam Orme answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      I think it’s a very bad idea for anyone to go on a sunbed, let alone a 13-year old, and I think you’re great for wanting to persuade her not to.

      UV light, which is what you get on a sunbed, is very dangerous. It causes DNA to break, so your cells have to try and repair it, and that means the cells are much more likely to pick up mutations (if they don’t manage to repair the DNA totally correctly). So the chances of getting skin cancer are increased a lot. And this might be something good to tell her: in some of my experiments, for various reasons I need to kill cells – and I use UV light to do this. So it can’t be good for your body!

      What’s wrong with fake tan if she really wants to look brown???

    • Photo: Joanna Watson

      Joanna Watson answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Hi. I hope that you can convince your friend not to use a sunbed because it’s really not worth it – especially when there are so many great fake tan lotions and sprays.

      I have just checked on the Cancer Reseach UK website and they say that: Sunbeds are estimated to cause 100 deaths from skin cancer (melanoma) every year in the UK and that using a sunbed once a month or more can increase your risk of skin cancer by more than half. It is especially bad for young people and if you use sunbeds for the first time before the age of 35 it increases your risk of developing melanoma skin cancer by 75%!!!

      If your friend is not worried about getting cancer, you could try telling her about the damage that sunbeds will do to her skin. Most of the rays from sunbeds are UVA rays which are often described on beauty products as the ‘aging’ part of sunlight. Using a sunbed causes lots of skin damage and is likely to make her skin coarse, leathery and wrinkly when other people her age still have lovely young looking skin.

      There is lots more information about sunbeds on the Cancer Research UK SunSmart website: http://www.sunsmart.org.uk/advice-and-prevention/sunbeds/index.htm

    • Photo: Leo Garcia

      Leo Garcia answered on 20 Jun 2010:

      Unnecessary exposure to UV radiation should be avoided, as the risk of developing skin cancer increases with repeated skin damage. Studies show that repeated sunbed use corresponds to an increased risk in developing skin cancer (melanoma):

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8172690.stm
      http://www.who.int/uv/publications/sunbedpubl/en/
      http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/29/tanning-sunbeds-cancer

      I would personally consider sunbeds unnecessary, and I would hope that, at 13, the colour of my skin was not of particularly high concern. Perhaps after reading some of that literature (and the reponses of the scientists here) your friend will avoid sunbeds.

Comments