Indoor tanning blamed for skin cancer

The study authors calculate the number of skin cancers that can be blamed on indoor tanning each year exceeds the number of lung cancers attributed to smoking, Fox News reports.

The World Health Organization (WHO), the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Dermatology have come out against indoor tanning in recent years.

In 2007, a working group affiliated with WHO found that people who used tanning beds before their 30th birthday were 75 percent more likely to develop melanoma - the deadliest form of skin cancer.

Previous research has attempted to estimate the number of people exposed to indoor tanning devices in individual countries, but Dr. Eleni Linos and her colleagues wanted to know estimates for people around the world. Linos is the study's senior author and a dermatologist at the University of California, San Francisco.

For the new analysis, the researchers compiled data collected between 1986 and 2012 as part of 88 previous studies. The studies included data from almost 500,000 people in the U.S., Australia and 14 countries in Eastern and Western Europe.

Overall, they found that about 36 percent of adults and 55 percent of college students reported exposure to indoor tanning sometime in their past. 

The researchers estimated that about 419,000 cases of basal and squamous cell carcinoma and almost 11,000 cases of melanoma each year are attributable to indoor tanning.

For perspective, they point out in JAMA Dermatology, about 363,000 cases of lung cancer are attributable to smoking each year in the same countries included in the study.