This entry “dovetails” nicely into this month’s Sun is Life® feature so, read both!
In the SIL piece, I cover the myth of the tanner who supposedly “fried her internal organs” after many indoor tanning sessions in one day – a myth that is obviously not true and dispelled in my column. So I took it a step further, doing a search: “how many people have died in a sunbed?” Not the “Final Destination” movie kind of death, not from a heart attack or other similar medical issue; but actually from the process of tanning indoors.
I’ve been involved in our industry for several decades and have taught indoor tanning certification courses for almost as long. So, let’s look back at some numbers. How many commercial tanning beds have been in use in the U.S. during that time frame? Well, let’s take a jab at something perhaps more realistic. How many tanning facilities are there in your town? Okay, how many sessions do those salons deliver to consumers in a year? Now, broaden that estimate, taking into account the number of salons in your state and those yearly sessions. Then, expand the data to include the number of sessions delivered each year throughout the entire country. Finally, roll that number up with the total number of sessions since the late 80s, when modern indoor tanning really took off – that’s about 40 years and that, folks, is a lot of sessions! So, how many people – as morbid as the question might be – how many people have died from tanning?
In all of my research, I could find only one single event, and even that was the result of a tanner taking medication prescribed by her doctor and unaware of the potential side effects associated with UV exposure. About 33 years ago, Patsy Campbell of Portage, IN took a prescription medication called psoralen (used to treat psoriasis) and followed it with a tanning session. Her doctor should have made her aware of the extreme risk of a photosensitive reaction from combining that drug with any UV source – indoor or outdoor. He did not inform her, and Campbell suffered burns over 70% of her body from which she subsequently died. After arguably hundreds of thousands of indoor sessions delivered not only in the U.S. but worldwide, I found that single incident.
Look, any fatality is one too many; but it should put indoor tanning into perspective amidst the risky things we do in our everyday lives. A drive to the grocery store can be deadly!
Drive safely … and enjoy indoor tanning in moderation.
NOTE: The topic of using prescription medications while tanning is covered in depth in Sun is Life Certification.
