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Indoor Tanning: Dark Skin Now Could Mean Cancer Later

According to ABC News when women hit the tanning bed to get bronze and beautiful skin, they may be heightening their risk for skin cancer later on in life. One woman named Kim Benz recently when under the knife to have skin cancer removed from her nose. She explained to ABC that she was worried about the scarring, because if the scar did not melt back into her skin she would have a large an obvious mark on the middle of her nose for the rest of her life.

The woman says that she now uses heavy makeup to hide her facial scars, and regrets being a frequent tanning bed customer since the age of 17. She was diagnosed with skin cancer in her early 20s. Benz is only one of 170,000 women that get skin cancer after spending time in the tanning beds every single year. Benz is now 39 and says that she has skin lesions all over her body where the doctors have had to surgically remove her cancer spots.

Studies show that indoor tanning beds are linked to two common types of skin cancer. The cancers are now showing up in younger women, under the age of 25. Previously, skin cancer was more common as a person aged. About 170,000 women every year are diagnosed with non-melanoma skin cancers. Most commonly the patients are diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma, an illness that forms in the higher layers of the skin. Others are being diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma as a result of the tanning beds. About 2 million Americans obtain a non-melanoma skin cancer every year. Typically, the cancerous growths can be removed through a surgery, and no chemotherapy is necessary.

Still, the cancer removal surgeries can leave scars that will last the rest of a person’s lifetime. One study reported that using indoor tanning beds raises the possibility for squamous cell carcinoma by 67 percent and the potential for basal cell carcinoma by 29 percent. If you have obtained a skin cancer from frequenting tanning beds and were never warned of this danger by the tanning personnel, then you may want to think about litigation. Talk to a lawyer at our firm for more information!