Study: Indoor Tanning Linked With Early Onset of Skin Cancer

Given that indoor tanning beds were officially classified as a human carcinogen in 2009 — up there with cigarettes and asbestos — it should be fairly obvious that frequent tanning-booth exposure would increase your risk of skin cancer.



Indeed, the evidence linking indoor tanning with melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, and squamous cell carcinoma, one of the more common forms of the disease, is "convincing," according to the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer. But the research concerning tanning beds and basal cell carcinoma, the third and most frequent major type of skin cancer — which accounts for some 80% of all skin cancer cases in the U.S. — has thus far been inconsistent.

Basal cell carcinoma, a slow-growing cancer, has traditionally been a disease of middle age. But it's been appearing with increasing frequency in people under 40, especially in women — a demographic that also happens to like indoor tanning — suggesting a link. So researchers at the Yale School of Public Health sought to study the association.      Read Full