The International Smart Tan Network wrote a new response to an Illinois newspaper story about indoor tanning — updating the tanning community’s response to reflect new information on UV’s role in stimulating natural vitamin D production.

“Our case keeps getting stronger, giving us more and more ability to make our point,” Smart Tan Vice President Joseph Levy said. Levy’s response is printed below.

To read the Daily Illini article, Tanning: The Bare Reality of Sun Exposure, click here.

Smart Tan’s Response to the Daily Illini:

The best way to analyze this now-largely political issue is to do so with dispassionate objectivity. Please consider:

1. There is not one study implicating tanning in a non-burning fashion as the mechanism that increases one’s risk of melanoma. Not one. This very important distinction is especially important now that we know humans need regular UV exposure as the only natural way to manufacture natural vitamin D levels.
2. Melanoma is more common in those who work INDOORS than in those who work outdoors and occurs most often on parts of the body that DON’T get regular sun exposure. These facts could not be true if sunlight had a straight-forward relationship with the disease.
3. Since 1985 melanoma incidence and mortality have DECLINED in women under age 50 in Canada, and mortality has DECLINED in this age group in the United States. In contrast, the group seeing large increases in melanoma is men over age 50 — the group least likely to tan.
4. Daily sunscreen usage is unnatural and is misbranding a product whose sole value is preventing sunburn on days when sunburn is a possibility. Recent reports suggest oxybenzone — a toxin that serves as an active ingredient in most sunscreens today — is showing up in people’s bloodstream.

The sun care argument today has been hijacked by the $35 billion “sun scare” industry — groups that profit by telling you to avoid the sun. That’s just throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Tan smart. Avoid sunburn. Use sunscreen only when sunburn is a possibility — not as a daily-use product in times of the year when
sunburn isn’t a possibility.

And check out independent research about vitamin D — www.vitaminDcouncil.org and www.GrassrootsHealth.org are highly
recommended sources.