Nearly one-third of tanning salons are breaking the law by not checking the age of sunbed users, according to a study conducted by the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH).
Since April 2011, it has been illegal to allow anyone under the age of 18 to use a sunbed in a tanning salon.
But “secret” visits to 81 tanning salons in 12 local authority areas found that around 32% of salons were failing to put in place the checks required. This was potentially leaving young people at greater risk of contracting skin cancer, the CIEH said.
A poll of 1,500 women by Macmillan Cancer Support, meanwhile, has concluded that nearly one in four will risk skin cancer by not wearing sun-tan lotion abroad this summer. Even on a sunny day, 22% said that they would not wear protective lotion when they were abroad in a hot country.
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When those people who said they would not wear protection were asked why, a quarter said it was because they didn’t burn, 14% thought sun-tan lotion was too expensive and 12% believed it did not work.
Yet four out of five of the survey respondents had been badly sunburnt in the past, which can lead to both skin damage and skin cancer.
