Posted on 09/08/2003 1:54:40 PM PDT by NativeNewYorker
Sept. 8 (Bloomberg) -- More than one-third of white, teenaged girls in the U.S. have used a tanning booth, which may age the skin and raise the risk of cancer, and about 30 percent have used the devices at least three times, according to a study.
Repeated use increased with age, rising to 47 percent among 18- and 19-year old girls from 11 percent among 13- and 14-yearolds, said study leader Catherine Demko, a cancer epidemiologist at Case Western University School of Medicine in Cleveland.
Researchers once thought the dominant form of ultraviolet rays in sunlight, called UV-B, posed more risk of skin cancer than another type of light called UV-A. Recent research suggests that UV-A radiation, which composes a large portion of the light in tanning beds, may risk raise the risk of skin aging and cancer nearly as much as UV-B, Demko said in an interview.
``Girls are exposing themselves to UV-A and UV-B radiation through indoor and outdoor tanning,'' she said. ``They could be setting themselves up for greater risk.''
More than 1 million skin cancer cases are diagnosed each year, and more than 50,000 of those are the most serious form, malignant melanoma, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Melanoma cases have increased 7 percent annually since 1981, and it is the most common form of cancer in people 25 to 29 years old, the agency's Web site said.
Use of tanning beds among teen-age boys was much lower, with less than 7 percent using them three times or more, the study said. Parents should help teen-aged children find other ways to alter appearances besides tanning booths, Demko said.
The study, which appears in the September Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, looked at 6,900 white adolescents in 1996 and was funded by the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
I'd like to see the stats on pierced tongues, navels, and eyebrows counts up. I travel a bit and its seems to be a universal fad in the U.S.
The last girl that showed me her pierced tongue, was fishing for some kind of compliment I think. I asked her, "can't you just put those things on with superglue in case you change your mind."
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