Quarter of a million English children risk skin cancer at tanning beds

By Sheilah Downey

Researchers estimate than a quarter of a million 11 to 17 year old children in England are raising their risk of skin cancer by using tanning beds and are calling for legislation to stop the practice.

In a letter to this week's British Medical Journal researchers point out that sunbeds raise serious health issues especially in younger children.

They pointed to two studies involving more than 9,000 children between the ages of 11 and 17.  The first studied tanning habits of 3,101 children and found that 6 percent had used a sunbed at the average age of 14.

More than a quarter of the of the children, 26.5 percent, said they used a tanning bed once a month.

The second study of 6,209 children found that Liverpool had the highest rate of tanners, 51 percent, and the second highest in Sunderland with   48 percent of teens ages 15 to 17 using the beds. More than 40 percent of the teens said they used tanning beds weekly.

The authors wrote that supervision of the tanning beds was poor, reporting that more than one in five, or 21.8 percent, had been unsupervised.

Only 11.4 percent of the children who were supervised said they were warned of possible health dangers.

The high rate of sunbed use would lead to a more than quarter of a million 11 to 17 year olds at an increased risk for malignant melanoma, said the authors.