Charity joins sunbed outcry

0 Comments | South Wales Echo (Cardiff, Wales), Sept 18, 2009

Byline: Greg Tindle

MORE than 4,000 people have signed a petition calling for a ban on unmanned and coinoperated sunbed salons. It was presented to the National Assembly yesterday by Tenovus, as the Cardiff-based cancer charity also called for new laws to prevent under-18s being allowed to use tanning beds.

The campaigners say the beds can be linked to a huge rise in the number of people with skin cancer over the past decade.

Tenovus wants the ban to mirror one introduced in Scotland last year on coin-operated salons. And it comes after the case of a South Wales teenager who was badly burnt using such a salon.

Dr Ian Lewis, the charity's research manager, said: "Each year in Wales more than 400 people are diagnosed with malignant melanoma, which is the most deadly form of skin cancer and 100 people die.

"This is almost double the numbers of 10 years ago. The biggest worry is the rise in skin cancer among the 15 to 24-year-olds who are among the biggest users of these salons.

"What we are asking is for the Assembly to look at the licensing of salons and whether they can introduce such a law.

"You can see these salons on just about every high street and no licence is needed but people should remember just a few minutes of the radiation that sunbeds emit is six times stronger than the Australian midday sun."

Dr Lewis added: "While the unmanned, coin-operated sunbeds are, in themselves, no more or less dangerous than other sunbeds, what is incredibly concerning about them is that children, with delicate, unprotected and rapidly growing skin, can expose themselves to high levels of dangerous, high-intensity radiation.

"Two such cases have been particularly shocking in recent months, including the case of 14-year-old Kirsty McRae, of Barry Island, who spent 19 minutes on a sunbed at an unmanned salon and ended up in hospital with 70% burns because of her injuries."

The petition was accepted by Val Lloyd, chairwoman of the Assembly's petitions committee.

She said: "Our role is to now consider the petition and perhaps ask what more information is needed to take this matter further."

A spokeswoman for the Sunbed Association, which represents sunbed manufacturers, distributors and operators and does not support the provision of unmanned salons, stated in recent evidence to a National Assembly inquiry that it disputed the link between a "responsible" use of sunbeds and the increase in skin cancer.

CAPTION(S):

AMs Bethan Jenkins and Andrew RT Davies, Claudia McVie, chief executive of Tenovus, and Val Lloyd AM with the petition at the Senedd