New legislation introduced Friday would prohibit all Illinois minors from using sunless tanning beds.
Senate Bill 2244, introduced by Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno (R-Lemont), would ban Illinois minors age 17 and younger from sunless tanning.
Currently, minors ages 14 to 17 are allowed to tan if they provide a parent's signature.
Radogno said in a press release that lawmakers need to take more serious action to prevent the "potentially deadly effects" of tanning.
“Just as we don’t give children the option to smoke, they shouldn’t be allowed to tan indoors—which medical studies show is a dangerous, and even deadly, practice,” Radogno said in a statement. “The light from indoor tanning beds is considered a Class 1 carcinogen, and many respected medical experts agree sunless tanning does increase the risk of cancer.”
In 2009, experts at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization, moved tanning beds and other sources of ultraviolet radiation into the top cancer risk category—the same classification given to arsenic and mustard gas, according to Radogno.
“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the risk of developing melanoma due to tanning bed use increases by 75 percent for people under age 35, and the British Medical Journal agrees the earlier people start tanning, the greater the risk they will develop skin cancer,” she said. “There are plenty of safe tanning alternatives available, and there is absolutely no need for young people to take this unnecessary health risk.”
Illinois, California and Vermont are among states that have recently passed laws to restrict minors from visiting indoor tanning salons. California and Vermont are the only states with an outright ban on minors under age 18.
On Feb. 11, Oregon lawmakers introduced a bill that would require anyone younger than 18 to show a doctor's note before using a tanning bed.
In 2010, 14 different states worked to pass legislation prohibiting minors from tanning indoors, and in 2012 that number increased to 20, Radogno said.
A youth Tanning Bed ban sends a clear message UV radiation is a recognized carcinogen. It encourages responsible sun exposure. This quote from age 9 of the U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE Investigative Report titled 'False and Misleading Health Information Provided to Teens by the Indoor Tanning Industry', indicates parental consent does not reduce youth tanners. "Studies of compliance with parental consent laws in Texas, North Carolina, and Minnesota and Massachusetts have found tanning salon compliance rates of 11%, 13%, and 19%, respectively. Despite an increase over the last decade in states requiring some form of parental permission for indoor tanning, researchers have found no measurable decrease in indoor tanning among older adolescent girls." http://www.aahperd.org/aahe/about/updates/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&pageid=169705 The American Academy of Pediatrics strongly supports a ban: " Federal, state, and local governments should work toward passing legislation to ban minors' access to tanning salons. Governments should work to ensure that such legislation is enforced." http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/127/3/588.full
" Although they agree that vitamin D is important for good health, leaders in skin cancer prevention oppose intentional sun exposure to induce vitamin D production, because UVR is a known human carcinogen. There have been no studies of children suggesting a level of sun exposure that would negate the need to comply with dietary vitamin D recommendations." (NO studies of children) http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/127/3/588.full Canadian Paediatric Society: "While the precise roles of specific UV wavelengths in both melanin production and carcinogenesis are still to be fully elucidated, DNA damage appears to be the key intermediary for both. Tanning induced by UVR that is devoid of carcinogenic risk may be scientifically impossible." "Relying on UVR as a source of vitamin D has been challenged because of the substantial overlap of DNA damage from such exposure and the production of vitamin D. Moreover, exposure to UVR is complicated by the quantity of skin exposed, the darkness or pigmentation of that skin, the wavelength or energy of the source (which varies with the time of year and latitude), and the degree of one's vitamin D deficiency. Artificial UVR exposure further compounds matters with the mix, intensity and variability of UVA and UVB generated by tanning bed emitters and is neither a reliable or advisable source of vitamin D." http://www.cps.ca/documents/position/tanning-facilities
"In an NCI-sponsored study published in September 2009 in the Archives of Dermatology, the study researchers hired and trained college students to pose as 15-year-old, fair-skinned girls who had never tanned before. By telephone, the students asked more than 3,600 tanning facilities in all 50 states about their practices. Less than 11 percent of the facilities followed FDA's recommended exposure schedule of three or fewer sessions the first week. About 71 percent said they would allow a teen to tan all seven days the first week, and many promoted frequent tanning with "unlimited tanning" discount price packages. " http://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm186687.htm