Australia Is Banning Tanning Beds

Country hopes to lower high skin cancer rates
By Ruth Brown,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 23, 2013 11:06 AM CDT
Australia Is Banning Tanning Beds
Tanning beds will soon be banned in salons in most Australian states.   (PRNewsFoto/ETS Tan LLC)

Aussies may not be artificially bronzed for much longer, with the majority of Australian states introducing bans on tanning beds. Australia has some of world's highest rates of skin cancer, which accounts for 80% of all cancers diagnosed in the country, the Wall Street Journal reports. A recent study found that 1 in 6 melanomas in Australians between ages 18 and 29 could be prevented if all tanning salons were banned. "The clear weight of medical evidence supports a ban," says the health minister of the state of Victoria, which is banning the devices in salons toward the end of next year.

Of course, the ban has its complications. In New South Wales, salons have been selling the beds off at big discounts to consumers for home use, which some worry is far more dangerous. Queensland, the most recent state to ban the beds, will pay $1,000 per bed in compensation to salon owners, reports the ABC, but that's not exactly appeasing some. One tanning salon owner in Brisbane says he plans to "go down fighting," noting that his beds cost him $40,000 each. "What am I going to do with all this equipment, hand it back to them for $1,000? To be honest with you, I'm not going to hand it back, I'll go to court." (More tanning bed stories.)

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