Nine out of 10 sunbeds have 'unsafe' UV levels

Conclusion This well-conducted and useful study suggests that, on average, the UV exposure from tanning units throughout England is higher than the recent standard level introduced throughout the EU, and that cancer risk from the average level of radiation seen across these units is more than twice that of the midday summer Mediterranean sun. The researchers say that there is a recent trend of increasing UV levels, and that this coincides "with the development of new high-power sunlamps". There are some discrepancies between the reporting of this research and the methods used in the study. Some newspapers reported the risk of skin cancer from sunbeds is twice as high as the Mediterranean sun, while others reported the risk as six times higher than natural sunlight. The headlines reporting six times the risk are misleading, as this figure is based on a single sunbed that had the highest levels of UV radiation. This is an inappropriate interpretation of the data and results. While this is certainly not a healthy level of exposure, it does not represent the average exposure of sunbeds in England, as implied by the headlines, but rather one extreme end of the range of sunbeds tested. At the other end, researchers found that a single tanning unit exposed users to 2.5 times less skin cancer risk than the Mediterranean sun. Neither of these results should be interpreted as representing the risk of sunbeds across England as a whole. The researchers report that there ha...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Cancer Source Type: news