| Sunbed tanning can lead to cancer for fair
Tanning beds can lead to cancer for fair-skinned people. New safety limits will have to be set, but the specifics required further study, he added. "We think that this is a second pathway to melanoma," co-author Edward De Fabo, a photobiologist at the George Washington University in Washington, told AFP. "The early step in the tanning process is where the real risk lies," he suggested. The tans cultivated by fair people, in contrast, offered very little screening. In tests on shaved lab mice whose results should apply to humans too, UVA interacted with the pigment melanin to cause the most dangerous type of skin cancer, melanoma, they said. Tanning lamps, said De Fabo, emitted up to 12 times the UVA intensity found in natural sunlight -- made up of about 95 percent UVA and five percent UVB. Very dark-skinned people, like those of African origin, very rarely develop melanoma as their skins don't allow the Sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation to penetrate the deeper levels of the epidermis. "A lot of people go to those sun-tanning parlours because they think when they get a base tan they are great to go out in the high intensity sunlight. |
Friday, 8 June 2012
Sunbed tanning can lead to cancer for fair
