Skip to footer

FDA looks to crack down on teens use of tanning salons

The agency proposes new regulations to restrict a popular activity that it says is harmful to public health.

|
Rich Pedroncelli/AP/File
An open tanning bed in Sacramento, Calif., Dec. 9, 2011. Federal health officials on Friday proposed a ban on the use of tanning beds for anyone under the age of 18. The Food and Drug Administration proposal would also require tanning bed users to sign consent forms acknowledging the risks of the radiation-emitting devices.
  • By Lonnie Shekhtman Staff

The US Food and Drug Administration on Friday said it wants to help prevent people, particularly minors, from using indoor tanning facilities, which public health officials have linked to development of skin cancer.

The agency has proposed banning people younger than 18 from using sunbeds and requiring sunlamp manufacturers and tanning facilities to make the devices more safe.

For adult users, the FDA proposal would require them to have to sign a form acknowledging they understand that indoor tanning exposes users to radiation before their first session and every six months thereafter.

The agency also wants tanning facilities and manufacturers to make warnings easier to read and more prominent on tanning devices, and to require an emergency shut-off switches, or “panic buttons” on sun lamps, among other changes.

“Today’s action is intended to help protect young people from a known and preventable cause of skin cancer and other harms,” said acting FDA Commissioner Stephen Ostroff, in an online announcement.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, injuries related to indoor tanning resulted in more than 3,000 emergency room visits on average per year in the United States, based on about a decade of data leading up to 2012.

There are up to 19,000 indoor tanning salons and up to another 20,000 other facilities, such as health clubs and spas, that offer tanning services in the US. They attract 1.6 million minors each year, estimates the FDA, particularly girls.

Last year the FDA began to require warnings on tanning beds advising minors to not use them, reports the Associated Press, which also reports that the agency has regulated tanning machines for several decades, but until recently had not attempted to restrict their use.

Some states already prohibit minors from tanning in indoor facilities. In 2013, New Jersey passed a law banning children under age 17 from using commercial tanning beds after a local woman was accused of taking her 5-year-old daughter into a tanning booth.

This report contains material from the Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to FDA looks to crack down on teens use of tanning salons
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/2015/1218/FDA-looks-to-crack-down-on-teens-use-of-tanning-salons
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe