Teens, Tans and Truth

Brittany Lietz says she learned that the hard way. As a high-school junior, Lietz decided she looked too pale in her white prom dress, so she joined friends heading to a tanning salon near Annapolis, Md. What started as a lark soon became a 20-minute-a-day obsession. "I was a 'tanorexic'," says Lietz. "You know how an anorexic never thinks she's thin enough. I never thought I was tan enough." A bleeding mole discovered at the age of 20 sent Lietz to a dermatologist. It turned out to be stage 1B melanoma. Other suspicious growths were tested. "Every one of them turned out to have some cancerous characteristics," she said. Surgeries to remove the growths have left the 23-year-old with 35 scars so far. With no family history of melanoma and a mother who always insisted on sunscreen outside, Lietz is convinced that her time in tanning beds caused her cancer. A former Miss Maryland and now a Redskins cheerleader, she's working with the American Academy of Dermatology as they launch a new public-service campaign against indoor tanning. ITA denies a link between melanoma and tanning beds.

Doctors say they are particularly concerned about the ITA's pro-sun ads because the number of new melanoma cases has been steadily rising since the 1970s, and are increasing faster in females 15 to 29 years old than males the same age. Dr. Anir Dhir, a dermatologist in Lexington, Ky., adds that of the 800 cases of melanoma he's treated in his career, "60 of them were in women younger than 30 years old, and all of them were avid tanning-bed users."

While the ITA prepares its second round of ads pushing the idea of a "healthy tan," teens say this debate is largely irrelevant to them. "I know it's bad," says high-school senior Jessica Carter of Campbellsport, Wis. The reason she goes to her local tanning salon three or four times a week is that she thinks a tan makes her "look really attractive." Her friend, Alex Lloyd, who tans five days a week, says she just ignores the bad press tanning gets. "A lot of people tell me I do it too much, blah, blah, blah," she says. "But I just don't care."

If warnings about cancer won't get teens' attention, maybe the premature wrinkles and skin damage on older tanners will. That's what got Anne Wallis, a high-school senior in Radnor, Pa., to cut back on her time under the sunlamp. "They look older than they are and, sometimes, really leathery," she says. John Overstreet, executive director of the ITA, doesn't try to dispute that. "People get the same thing from us that they get from the sun," he says. "They get wrinkles." On that point, doctors say, you'll hear no argument from them.

With Karen Springen, Daniel Stone and Sarah Elkins

© 2008