ABC World News reported, “Here’s a surprising fact we learned. There are more tanning salons in America than there are Starbucks. It is a huge, booming business. But some members of Congress warned today that it is also built on massive deception.”

The Los Angeles Times ”Booster Shots” blog reports that “the more you use a tanning bed, the higher your risk of deadly skin cancers, according to research presented at” the AACR International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research.

Indoor tanning beds may be even more likely to cause skin cancer than previously believed. New research published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology suggests that the main type of ultraviolet rays used in tanning beds – UVA1 – may penetrate to a deep layer of skin that is most vulnerable to the cancer-causing changes caused by UV rays.

California has become the first state to ban teenagers under the age of 18 from using tanning beds. I suspect there will be more.

The New York Times (Subscription Publication) “Well” blog reports, ”People who frequently use tanning beds experience changes in brain activity during their tanning sessions that mimic the patterns of drug addiction,” according to a study appearing in the journal Addiction Biology.

A recent survey is revealing that a majority of young women admit to using tanning by both the use of tanning beds and basking in the sun. Both are potentially dangerous, a fact not realized by many who tan.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has released a new report urging a ban on allowing minors to use tanning beds.

Indoor tanning increases the risk for melanoma and should be avoided, according to investigators of a new case–control study from the state of Minnesota.

USA Today reports that “people who have ever used tanning machines were…more likely to develop melanoma than others, according to a study” published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.