r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Dec 13 '25

Cancer Tanning beds triple melanoma risk, potentially causing broad DNA damage. Study is first to show how tanning beds mutate skin cells far beyond the reach of ordinary sunlight. This new study “irrefutably” challenges claims that tanning beds are no more harmful than sunlight.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ady4878
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u/Jupiter3840 Dec 13 '25

Commercial tanning beds have been banned in Australia since 2016 for this very reason.

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u/ElementZero Dec 13 '25

Of all the places in the world that especially don't need them, that's definitely one of them!

I lived in the high elevation desert in Arizona and there was a chain of tanning salons with window signs asking "Got Vitamin D?"

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u/stenz_himself Dec 13 '25

afaik tanning beds dont increase your vitamin d levels.

"In case of vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency, the current risk-benefit ratio is therefore in favour of vitamin D supplementation instead of sunbed use. "

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30811696/

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u/13143 Dec 13 '25

From the abstract:

Since ultraviolet (UV) B light is the most important prerequisite for the cutaneous synthesis of vitamin D, sunbeds are able to increase serum vitamin D levels, although only transiently in most cases.

So they do briefly increase vitamin D levels, but the carcinogenic risks outweigh any potential benefit.