Newswise — At her 21st birthday, Julie Moore* understood better than most what "having your whole life in front of you" meant. Not because she could finally order a legal drink, but because her whole life had just depended on noticing one tiny freckle.
The freckle, it turned out, was melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.
Tanning booths and sun worshipping had left their mark early.
"When you are tan," says Moore, a University of Texas at Austin graduate, "you look taller, thinner—better. Girls like Paris Hilton and other celebrities are always tanned."
Summer months make it easy to stay bronzed, especially in sunshine states like Texas. But year-round tans are harder to come by the natural way. So, to hasten the process, Moore says, she went to tanning salons, without her mother's knowledge, from the time she was 16 to 21.
One night, she was shaving her legs and nicked herself. "Right above my knee was a little freckle. I noticed it because my mom had always told me to watch for moles."
A few months later, "I was lying out in the sun and noticed the spot had gotten bigger. It wasn't raised, but it was now the size of the tip of a pen—still small but bigger than before."
After putting off a visit to the dermatologist for several months, she finally went and was told that it needed to be removed. The subsequent biopsy was positive for malignant melanoma. Moore had surgery at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center a month later to enlarge the margins of the area to ensure removal of all cancerous cells.
Today, she is 23, free of melanoma and worships the sun only from afar.
"The myth that keeps circulating among teens is that tanning salons use 'safe rays.' There is no such thing," says dermatologist Dr. Adelaide Hebert, and professor of dermatology at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston.
Tanning booths use the same ultraviolet light (UV) that the sun produces. Both wavelengths of light, UVA and UVB, damage the skin. Because artificial tanning sessions take less time than the drive to the salon, clients are lulled into a false sense of safety.
"It was so much faster to get a tan by going to tanning salons. They are so cheap--$18 or $20 a month for all the sessions you want," Moore says.
The National Cancer Institute's website sites a 2003 study of Scandinavian women that shows women who use tanning beds more than once a month are 55 percent more likely to develop melanoma.
Yet Moore has an olive complexion, dark eyes and hair. She thought she carried a natural protection. "I never used sunscreen much," she admits.
Women also may be more prone to cancer from ultraviolet light than men, according to various studies. "For women, even one or two sessions on a tanning bed can increase their chances of cancer manifold," Hebert says.
Moore says that she made the same mistakes others have made over the decades. "I am young, so it didn't occur that this could happen to me."
UV radiation is considered the single largest environmental contributor to skin cancer, according to the American Academy of Dermatology Association. The UV radiation levels from indoor tanning devices can emit as much as 15 times more UV radiation than that from old-fashioned outdoor tanning.
The rates of skin cancer in the United States have skyrocketed. Each year, over a million new cases are diagnosed. Melanoma is now the second most common cancer in women ages 20-29.
Moore's mother says parents need to observe their children's bodies when they are swimming or participating in sports. "Which isn't easy once they hit late adolescence and it's even harder once they hit college. But, none of us can see ourselves 360 degrees, nor can we be objective about ourselves."
Young adult children need to be encouraged to examine themselves for changes in the skin, and have parents or college room mates check their backs, and scalps periodically. Hebert, who also sees pediatric patients at Memorial Hermann Hospital-Texas Medical Center, says that melanoma tends to grow on the arms and legs of girls and the arms and backs of boys.
The sad thing, Moore says, is that while "you hear doctors and adults say all the time that tanning can cause cancer, it isn't real until someone your age gets skin cancer. Today, there is ozone depletion and the sun is harsher. And there are those tanning salons."
Final advice from Moore, "If you notice something new on your skin or someone's you care about, no matter how small, even if it doesn't fit the normal skin cancer criteria, check it out and immediately. Then act on it. It could save a life."
* name has been changed to preserve privacy
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