New Zealand Fighting Back
Indoor tanning facility owners in New Zealand have organized to put a constructive voice into development of regulations and to add balance to one-sided press reports that have slammed indoor tanning in the South
Pacific this year.
Gabrielle Brown, a Smart Tan member from New Zealand who has attended most of Smart Tan’s Annual Fall conferences, is the spokesperson for INTANZ (Indoor Tanning Association of New Zealand), a group which issued a press release Monday. A New Zealand university had publicized a survey characterizing the New Zealand tanning market as growing out of control, without regulation. The New Zealand tanning community, in fact, is relatively small and has worked toward effective self-regulation.
“The research is flimsy at best,” Brown says. “It is yet another piece of skewed information perpetrated by the anti-tanning lobby with the intention of scaring the public away from our services.”
New Zealand — an island nation about the size of Colorado — is about 1,000 miles east of Australia, stretching between 34 and 45 degrees south of the equator in the Southern Hemisphere. In terms of climate, that’s roughly the same distance from the equator as California.
INTANZ is now actively involved with a revision of New Zealand’s 2002 Standard. The group’s mission is to work toward self-regulation of the industry, raising the standard of indoor tanning across the board while protecting individual freedom to tan. Of extreme importance to the group is also educating the public on “the other side of the UV debate.”
“Human beings need ultraviolet light for survival, and for health,” says Brown. “The sun-scare mentality we are seeing now is dangerous, and irresponsible. Especially here in New Zealand where we have such a high level of UVB radiation in our sunshine, people need to be more aware of how to get the sunlight they need while staying protected. Absolute avoidance is not the way to go about it, and neither, in most cases, is 24/7 year-round SPF application. Certified indoor tanning salons will play a key role in helping Kiwis understand the complexities of ultraviolet light exposure.”
