RESEARCH PAPER

Colin Lord
English 250 FD
Mr. Perez
Protest Essay
Dying Slowly
The modern public is flooded with images of unrealistically beautiful people. The tone bodies, trendy clothes, and tan skin all stand out as notorious qualities possessed by these beautiful people that mere mortals such as ourselves can only try are best to imitate. To get a tone body you work out. Trendy clothing has a habit of coming from clothing stores. Tan skin falls out of the sky; literally in the form of ultra violet sunlight radiation (UVR). Of the thousands of avenues that young people pursue to acquire beauty, few pose as great a health risk as tanning. It is not a secret and medical studies confirm that skin cancer is linked to UV exposure. Young people have streamlined the operation of UV exposure with the incorporation of tanning sessions at local salons into their day-to-day life. Young people are either unaware or ignorant to the danger that tanning carelessly without precautions will have a negative impact on their life in the long run. Solutions to this problem must be acted on to avoid a future health care nightmare directed at today’s youth.
A basic understanding of the process by which a person’s skin becomes tanned by sunlight should be outlined before further explanation of its health effects. The tanning process itself is actually a defensive mechanism of the body to protect itself from damaging ultra violet radiation from the sun. Electromagnetic radiation from a wide range of wavelength is emitted by the sun and absorbed by the human body. Just above the visible range of the spectrum is ultra violet light (400nm-10nm) and the subsequent radiation associated with it. UVR is subdivided into UV-A and its higher energy counter part UV-B. UV-A is the cause of initial redness in the skin and UV-B acts toward the long term; UV-B is also the root cause of cell damage. When human skin cells are exposed to UVR, the radiation is absorbed by the DNA of the cell culminating in an energy transfer that edits the DNA sequence beyond repair. The cells with damaged DNA mutate and eventually propagate uncontrollably giving rise to skin cancer (Kozmin and Slezak 13538). However the human skin has a defensive response to this in the form of melanin. When UVR begins to damage the cells, specialized cells called melanocytes begins to produce this UVR absorbing substance called melanin. Melanin is a dark substance and is the cause of skin darkening after time spent in the sun (Nachtwey and Rundel 405-406).
“Artificial UVR exposure has been repeatedly identified as a factor that contributes to acute health effects such as erythema, sunburn, skin dryness, pruritus, nausea, photodrug reactions, disease exacerbation, and disease induction. Long-term health effects include skin aging, effects on the eye, and carcinogenesis” (Balk and Geller 1040).
Tanning beds function as a way to amplify the amount of UVR absorbed by the skin by simply exposing the skin to a higher dose of it over a smaller time frame. So a person who wished to gain a tan could do it in one-fifth the time if they used a tanning bed. The trade off of this timely convenience is that while you are being exposed to this synthetic UVR, you are also being exposed to almost seven times the average cancer causing UV-B than had you spent that same time in the sun (Nachtwey and Rundel 407).
In 2009 alone there are expected to be over 1 million new cases of skin cancer. Of these, an estimated 62,000 will be in the form of melanoma, an aggressive skin cancer with a survival rate of only 16%. Recent studies concerning the development of various skin cancers found that while basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma were responsive to increased doses of UV-B, melanoma did not share the same characteristic. Melanoma patients showed no correlation between susceptibility and amount of UVR experienced. Researchers concluded that Melanoma was more common in patients who had experienced extreme sunburns in the past, and thus were made vulnerable to the disease; repeated exposure to tanning beds made regular tanner three times more susceptible. Melanoma remains the 2nd and 3rd most common cancer of women and men respectively in their 20’s and 30’s. (McGovern 278).
Despite these glaring fact, teenagers in the United States still tan with little to no regard. It’s expected that 2.9 million teenagers will visit a tanning bed this year, and 10% of the nations teenagers are regular visitors of tanning salons. These teens are targeted by the tanning industry through methods such as advertisements and limited offers, making the deadly habit even more desirable (Balk and Geller 1040).
Some studies have pointed to an alternative answer to the popularity of tanning in our culture, saying it is an addictive behavior.
“It has long been suspected that cutaneous endorphins are produced during exposure to UV light. Now research published in the April 2006 issue of the journal of American academy of Dermatology suggest that frequent users of tanning beds may become addicted to these endorphins. Moreover, blocking the effects of the endorphins could lead to withdrawal symptoms.” The research also concluded “frequent tanners suffer some degree of dependency on endorphins” (Burton 408).
The issue of the availability of artificial tanning agents raises serious ethical and even legal questions. Some legal critics of the tanning salon industry claim that the salons violate clear health code statues concerning how much information a possible user receives before using a tanning bed. The claim stands that to use a device such as a tanning bed, the person should show some form of understanding regarding future health risks; similar to the warning on a pack of cigarettes.
“Informed consent is a process of information exchange that may include… in addition to reading and subject understanding. Obtaining informed consent is a standard for medical procedures and should be a standard for the indoor tanning industry, as it is unethical to permit indoor tanning if the patron is unaware of potential risk” (Heilig and D'Ambrosia 559).
Beyond taking legal action with this issue, better informing of teens first hand, prior to any initial use of tanning beds has also been shown to be effective. In a study conducted concerning teen sunscreen usage, “[teenagers] were more likely to use sunscreen if their parents had insisted on their use in early child hood, and also if their close friends used sunscreens” (Banks, Silverman and Schwartz 42). Teenagers from this same study were asked what could enhance sunscreen use among young people. They responded that more information concerning tanning ‘s role in skin aging and skin cancer focused on their age group is effective in deterring excessive tanning. Also that information about the ability to tan while using sunscreen could negate any misunderstanding teens have about sunscreen use (41).
None of these solutions thus far address the initial need for a teenager to tan, which is why they submit themselves to risk in the first place. Emerging products called sunless tanners are coming on the scene that address and meet this need for consumers. These sunless tanners use a chemical called dihydroxyacetone, which “research and extensive use have demonstrated to be a very safe method of changing skin color” (Sheehan MD and Lesher Jr MD 1192).
This problem is not as simple as convincing young people that they do not need to be tan. The idea of circumventing popular opinion about tanning and looking good is a pointless battle in the mind of a teenager that is sure to fail. Information and knowledge will be key in the battle against this health problem. Public opinion about the alternatives must be made known in order to even be given a chance to take effect. In the past, unhealthy habits such as smoking was once popular in places like Hollywood, and cigarettes were welcomed. Public opinion has since changed in recent history and so has smoking. This same approach could work for the tanning, the key being changing public opinion.



Works Cited
Balk, Sophie and Alan Geller. "Teenagers and Artificial Tanning." Pediatrics 121 (2008): 1040-1042.
Banks, Beverly, Robert Silverman and Richard Schwartz. "Attitudes of Teenagers Toward Sun Exposure and Sunscreen Use." Pediatrics 89.1 (1992): 40-42.
Burton, Adrian. "Tanning Trippers Get UV High." Environmental Health Perspectives 114.7 (2006): 403.
Heilig, Lauren and Renee D'Ambrosia. "A Case For Informed Consent? Indoor UV Tanning Facility Operator's Provision of Health Risks Information." Cancer Causes & Control 16.5 (2005): 557-560.
Kozmin, S. and A. Slezak. "UVA Radiation Is Highly Mutagenic in Cells That Are Unable to Repair 7,8-Dihydro-8-Oxoguanine in Saccharomyces cerevisiae." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102.38 (2005): 13538-13543.
McGovern, Victoria. "Genetic Basis of UVB Sensitivity." Environmental Health Perspectives 114.5 (2006): 278.
Nachtwey, D. S. and R. D. Rundel. "A Photobiological Evaluation of Tanning Booths." Science 211 (1981): 405-407.
Sheehan MD, Daniel and Jack Lesher Jr MD. "The Effect of Sunless Tanning on Behavior in the Sun: A Pilot Study." Southern Medical Journal 98.12 (2005): 1192-1195.