TANNING BED: Deaths have no connection
Posted: Saturday, Jan 30, 2010 - 08:25:41 pm PST
In regard to your AP article in today's health section about tanning beds I feel compelled to respond.
The article indicates that tanning beds may contribute to melanoma, a cancer that claimed more than 8,000 lives last year. Wow. An epidemic! The full-page article did not state if any of the 2009 deaths had in any way been connected to a tanning bed or if even one of the victims had ever been in a tanning bed. I find this confusing.
The 2009 "Sunscare" was financed by a $35 billion sunscreen industry. It behooves them that the American public is terrified of the sun and indoor tanning. Gee, I wonder if they are selling something.
What I find most distressing in the article are the numbers that are not included. For example, the number of Americans who are vitamin D deficient and the number of deaths caused by lack of sunlight (artificial or not) or are related to low levels of vitamin D.
Claiming that a tanning bed causes cancer is like saying water causes drowning. Over-exposure to almost anything is lethal, even oxygen. The claim is absurd.
Also listed on the same list of carcinogens, in the same class, are red wine, beer and certain types of fish. Ask the World Health Organization who paid to have tanning beds criminalized while letting red wine slide and we go directly back to the sunscreen industry. Why did tanning beds make headlines when listed as carcinogenic but not red wine?
The number of vitamin D deficient Americans is frightening, especially when you consider things such as knowing that vitamin D deficiency is linked to depression, insomnia, seasonal affective disorder, prostate, breast and colon cancer.
Far, far more lives are lost to diseases caused by LACK of sunlight than those caused by too much. Vitamin D from UV exposure can reduce your risk of breast cancer by 60 percent! Now that is worth a full-page article right there.
One 10-minute indoor tanning session produces 10,000 I.U.'s of vitamin D. A nutrient we cannot get from the sun in the winter if we live any farther north than Atlanta, Ga.
JONI CLEVENGER
Coeur d'Alene
TANNING BED: Deaths have no connection - Coeur d'Alene Press Newspaper - Local and National News - Kootenai County, Idaho
TANNING BED: Deaths have no connection
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