Recently, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission took the Australian Tanning Association (and two companies operating tanning salons) to federal court, alleging that certain claims made by the association and the companies were false and misleading. Ironically, the end result was a ruling requiring Australian salons to post the warnings listed below—which are false and deceptive in and of themselves. Basically, salons are not allowed to make statements that the anti-tanning “nannies” deem to be false and deceptive, but the court had no problem mandating that salons post statements that mislead the Australian public. Here are the warnings (and our rebuttal to each):
Warning No. 1: There is medical or scientific evidence which links solarium use with an increased risk of skin cancer.
While there is medical and scientific evidence linking solarium use with an increased risk of skin cancer, this evidence is “contrived” and biased. The research in question has several confounding errors resulting from (a) a failure to correct for overexposure to sunlight, (b) the lack of dose/response data for tanning equipment use and (c) the failure to correct for skin type and subtype. Therefore, this so-called medical or scientific evidence is not scientifically valid and is without merit.
Warning No. 2: Tanning does not materially protect the skin from sunburn.
Tanning results in the development of photo-protective facultative pigmentation which provides increased tolerance to UVR (TUVR) of six to 12 times the protection of un-tanned skin. That is certainly “material” by any reasonable standard. Moreover, a tan won’t wash off, doesn’t need to be reapplied each time you get wet and doesn’t contain harmful chemicals; thus, forcing salons to say that a tan doesn’t materially protect the skin from sunburn is misleading and damaging the public.
Warning No. 3: Skin damage caused by ultraviolet light may not be repaired by the body’s skin-repair mechanisms.
What the dermatology community defines as “skin damage” is actually the normal and natural response of the body to ultraviolet-radiation exposure. Moreover, it is highly likely that any damage not repaired came from overexposure to sunlight.
Warning No. 4: Damage to the body caused by ultraviolet-light exposure occurs without sunburn.
Because the “damage to the body” that supposedly is caused by ultraviolet-light exposure was not specified and documented, this statement is not only false and misleading, it is completely without merit.
