Well, for one thing, Tanning beds don't melt your eyeballs

0 Comments | The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star, Norfolk, VA, Jul 30, 2009 | by KERRY DOUGHERTY

Ever wonder why otherwise intelligent people shrug off government warnings?

It's because of hyperbole like this:

Tanning Beds as Deadly as Arsenic, Mustard Gas.

That was the headline slapped on the Associated Press story this week that said tanning beds can cause cancer.

Look, common sense told most of us long ago that tanning beds were dangerous. If the sun - about 90 million miles away - can cause skin cancer, imagine what bright bulbs, inches from your nipples, can do.

But equating sunbeds with mustard gas? Please.

Let's take a look at the nasty chemical compound that has almost nothing in common with Gulden's, except a name.

Mustard gas made its horrifying debut during World War I when the German Army unleashed it. Saddam Hussein used it against the Kurds in the 1980s, causing worldwide revulsion.

The National Institutes of Health characterizes mustard gas as a "blistering agent" that can lead to lung and other cancers.

As a weapon, mustard gas is both cruelly effective and hideous. It's meant to terrorize and maim the enemy, rather than kill quickly.

According to various reports, mustard gas causes agonizing blisters on the skin. It also burns the eyes. If inhaled, mustard gas burns the bronchial tubes and esophagus and can cause internal bleeding.

Given that, it's hard to believe that international cancer experts have now tossed tanning beds in the same deadly category with mustard gas.

Perhaps that's because there's a shortage of categories on the list of Bad Things That Cause Cancer. Seems to me that if there's nothing between "probably carcinogenic" and "mustard gas," the world's medical geniuses need to spend a few minutes inventing some new ones.

You don't need to be an M.D. to know that humans, even pale ones, can visit a tanning salon once without suffering any ill effects. Maybe even dozens of times.

But one blast of mustard gas and you're in a world of hurt.

In fact, mustard gas is one of those agents that keeps counterterrorism types up at night. It's fairly easy to make, they say, and there have been reports that al-Qaida attempted to manufacture mustard gas in Afghanistan.

Tanning beds?

Not high on the Homeland Security watch list, last time I checked.

What do you say we all agree that overuse of tanning beds is a bad idea. Besides probably causing cancer and maybe even wrinkles, they leave devotees with that tell tale orange-tinged tan.

Many of us have been warning our daughters about these things for years, just as our mothers told us to stop basting our bodies with a mixture of baby oil and iodine.

We slathered on the homemade concoction anyway.

As a result, members of the prune generation - people my age who grew up craving deep tans even if our skin argued against it - have learned the hard way that too much sun causes premature aging and a constellation of skin cancers.

Now the tanning-bed set is doomed to start skin-cancer screenings even earlier than we did.

The AP also reports that the same experts that say tanning beds are as deadly as mustard gas are urging folks to use bronzers instead of tanning machines.

Fine. Until someone discovers that tans-in-a-can are also carcinogenic, that is.

The good news?

There's at least one medical specialty guaranteed to be booming long after the Baby Boomers are gone:

Dermatology.

Kerry Dougherty, (757) 446-2306,

kerry.dougherty@cox.net