Health officials mull sunbed cancer risk
The Department of Health says it is aware that an international research centre has raised sunbeds to its highest cancer risk category and will consider the need for regulation.
A spokesman said that in the short-term the public was advised that using sunbeds without supervision was "strongly discouraged".
The report by the International Agency for Research on Cancer reclassifies sunbeds - deemed a "probable" cancer agent since 1992 - into the category of highest cancer risk. It said when people start using tanning devices before the age of 30, the risk of melanoma was raised by 75 per cent.
Leung Ka-lau, legislator for the medical sector, proposed that staff in tanning salons "should be trained according to some protocol". He said lawmakers would have to investigate the study's findings in detail before drawing any other conclusions.
But the operator of one local beauty salon said he was not prepared to enhance precautions. Leslie Chiang, who runs the California Super Tan salon in Causeway Bay, said: "Everybody knows what a tan is. If you're too dark, everybody knows when to stop".
Mr Chiang said the report was skewed. "The risk depends on your skin and your nationality. People with fair skin tend to have skin cancer far more. They're just using a report generated by countries where people usually have white skin."
He said his clients were a mixture of nationalities.
Sunbeds are particularly popular in the United States and northern Europe, where studies show that almost a quarter of the adult population have used them. However, Hongkongers are increasingly using them.
"We have definitely seen their use increasing in popularity in recent years," said Irene Chung of the Hong Kong Cancer Fund. "We strongly advise the public to reconsider the threat of this potentially fatal disease before getting a tan."
In Hong Kong, 59 people had malignant melanoma in 2006, and it killed 33 people in 2007.
Source: South China Morning Post, 30 July 2009
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
