(Reuters Health) - Skin cancers caused by indoor tanning are responsible for $343 million a year in direct medical costs for U.S. patients, a recent study suggests. “We already knew that the use of indoor tanning devices is damaging to health and can cause cancer, but we did not have a comprehensive documentation of the health impacts at the population level or an estimate of the costs of health care to treat these conditions,” said study co-author Hugh Waters of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An estimated 30 million people in the U.S. use tanning beds at least once a year, and they have approximately 25,000 tanning salons nationwide to choose from, researchers note in the Journal of Cancer Policy. To estimate the health costs associated with indoor tanning, researchers tallied the average costs to treat skin malignancies including melanoma, squamous cell carcinoma and basal cell carcinoma. With data on the prevalence of tanning device use in the U.S., they were able to calculate the number of skin cancer cases caused by tanning beds and the associated costs for treatment in 2015. But the study’s authors said they are hopeful that putting an estimate on the social costs of indoor tanning will help reduce use of the devices. Their cost estimates also didn’t include long-term medical and productivity costs associated with follow-up physician visits or additional care. Tanning beds, however, can make melanoma, the deadliest type of skin cancer, more likely, and the risk increases with more tanning sessions, Martin said.
– Tanning beds have long been associated with skin cancer, and now researchers are quantifying just what that costs the US financially. Reporting in the Journal of Cancer Policy, they calculate that in 2015, the direct medical care for skin cancers resulting from tanning bed exposure totals $343.1 million. What's more, they figure that early deaths and loss of productivity in these cases add up to a $127.3 billion loss over the lifetime of individuals currently diagnosed. But those are just dollar signs: the human toll is large, too, with more than 263,000 cases of skin cancer attributed to tanning beds in 2015 alone. The researchers call tanning beds a "significant contributor to illness and premature mortality in the US." Reuters notes that some 30 million Americans use tanning beds every year. Tanning beds emit UV-A rays, which damage DNA, and UV-B rays, which can burn one's skin and also raise the risk of skin cancer. (The research did not calculate the medical cost of burns.) Previous research has found that indoor tanning bed exposure in people younger than 35 nearly doubles their risk of melanoma, reports STAT News, and Americans must now be 18 or older to use them in several states. "Women younger than 30 are six times more likely to develop melanoma if they tan indoors," says a University of Alabama researcher who wasn't involved in the study. "Even one indoor tanning session can increase users' risk of developing squamous cell carcinoma by 67% and basal cell carcinoma by 29%." (Australia has outright banned tanning beds.)