A:
Yes. Tanning is your body’s natural
protection against sunburn; it’s what your body is designed to do.
Anti-tanning lobbyists falsely refer to this process as "damage” to
your skin, but calling a tan "damage” is a dangerous
oversimplification.
In fact, it’s much like calling exercise "damage to your muscles.”
When you exercise, you are actually tearing tiny muscle fibers in
your body. At first glance, when examined at the micro-level, this
tearing could be called "damage.” But this damage on the micro-level
is your body’s natural way of building stronger muscle tissue on the
macro-level. So to call exercise "damaging” to muscles would be
misleading. The same can be said of sun exposure: your body is
designed to repair any damage to the skin caused by ultraviolet
light exposure. Developing a tan is your body’s natural way of
protecting against the dangers of sunburn and further exposure.
It is the professional indoor tanning industry’s position that
sunburn prevention is a more effective message than total
abstinence, which ultimately encourages abuse. We believe ours is a
responsible, honest approach to the issue.
A:
Whether you tan outdoors under the sun or indoors in a professional
tanning facility, the tanning process is the same. This natural
process takes place when your skin is exposed to ultraviolet light.
Here is an overview.
Light is composed of energy waves that travel from the sun to the
Earth. Each energy wave can be identified by its length in
nanometers, (nm), which is one-billionth of a meter. Light can be
broken into three general categories: infrared, visible and
invisible. Ultraviolet light is in the invisible light spectrum.
There are three kinds of ultraviolet light: UVA, UVB and UVC. Two of
those categories, UVA and UVB, are used in indoor tanning equipment.
Tanning equipment is designed to replicate UVA and UVB produced by
the sun, but tanning lamps emit the light in carefully controlled
and government-regulated combinations. As a result, the user has
control over their exposure. That’s why people face greater risk of
overexposure tanning outdoors than they do by using tanning
equipment indoors.
Tanning itself takes place in the skin’s outermost layer, the
epidermis. There are three major types of skin cells in your
epidermis: basal cells, keratinocytes and melanocytes. All play
different roles in the tanning process.
Everyone has roughly the same number of melanocytes in their
bodies—about 5 million. Your heredity determines how much pigment
your melanocytes can produce. Melanocytes release extra melanosomes
whenever ultraviolet light waves touch them. This produces a tan in
your skin.
The tanning process is your skin’s natural way of protecting itself
from sunburn and overexposure. Calling a tan "damage to the skin”
isn’t telling the whole story. Your skin is designed to tan to
protect itself.
A: Indoor
tanning, for individuals who can develop a tan, is a smart way to
minimize the risk of contracting sunburn while maximizing the
enjoyment and benefit of having a tan. In a professional indoor
tanning facility, trained personnel teach tanners how their
particular skin type reacts to sunlight and how to avoid
sunburn—both outdoors as well as in the salon.
Tanning in a professional facility today minimizes the risk of
overexposure to UV light. In the United States, exposure times for
tanning sessions are derived from a schedule displayed on every
piece of tanning equipment. By taking into account the tanner’s skin
type and the intensity of the equipment, this schedule helps to
deliver a dosage of UV light that is designed to minimize the risk
of sunburn. The schedule also takes into account how long an
individual has been tanning, increasing exposure times gradually to
minimize the possibility of burning. This kind of control is
impossible outdoors, where variables including seasonality, time of
day, weather conditions, reflective surfaces and altitude all make
sunburn prevention more difficult.
A: The amount of UV radiation
that a person is exposed to depends on many factors including time
of day, season and latitude. The spectrum of UV radiation from a
tanning bed is similar to that of sunlight. It is less intense than
being in the sun at the equator in June at noon, but more intense
than being in the sun in Boston or San Francisco at the same time of
year. Even with a tan of SPF 4 (a moderate tan), a person who would
burn after being in the sun for 30 minutes can now be outside for
120 minutes before getting a sun burn. This highlights an important
benefit of moderate tanning—it prevents burning.
© 2005 Indoor Tanning
Association, Inc.
