The Daily HIT

A review of scientific studies  justifies considering tanning beds in a class with cigarettes and other poisons, according to a major study in Lancet Oncology.

The new report, published in the medical journal Lancet Oncology, looked at 20 previous studies and concluded that the risk of skin cancer increased by 75 percent when people start using tanning beds before age 30.

Melanoma has traditionally been a disease of older people, but the deadly skin cancer is increasingly being diagnosed in young adults, especially women in their 20s. It’s now the leading cancer diagnosed in British women in their 20s.

For 22-year-old Jenni Izzo, who’s been a self-proclaimed tanning addict since she was a freshman in high school, hearing tanning beds placed on the same level as cigarettes in terms of cancer risk was shocking.

“I’m incredibly against cigarette smoking, never smoked a cigarette in my life, and to see something I do so often on the same basis as smoking was a wake-up call,” says Izzo, who lives in Orlando, Fla. She now says she’s sworn off tanning for good.