The Sunbed Associuation, a British tanning salon group, has been promoting the health benefits of tanning in leaflets distriViotamin D, a natural result of sun exposure, they say, helps “some cancers, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, multiple sclerosis and depression.”
They forget about the increased risk of skin cancer, including its most deadly form melanoma. In a current book Risk, authors Ropeik andGray of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, say that skin cancer is not figured into standard cancer risk charts, because it is so very common. In fact, they say, in the US each year, new cases of skin cancers approximately equal new cases of all other kinds of cancer combined. (See p. 346 of the current paperback edition.)
Anyway, the British ad watchdogs, the Advertising Standards Authority, made the sunbed people stop promoting the health benefits of increasing your exposure to UV rays in tanning salons.