An advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration today recommended that the agency consider additional regulations on indoor tanning, despite testimony from the Indoor Tanning Association (ITA) that existing regulations in the U.S. – already the most stringent in the world – are sufficient and that additional oversight would be excessive, unjustifiable and could significantly damage the entire industry.
“This was a complex issue faced by the advisory panel, and we respectfully disagree with many of their recommendations,” said ITA president Dan Humiston. “Our industry standard practices already are far more stringent than the current FDA regulations require. For example, staff members are trained to recommend a tanning schedule tailored to each customer’s skin type to avoid sunburn or overexposure. Our customers are provided with information regarding the risks of overexposure through a signed consent form. Parents are required to provide signed approval for teens. In fact, the U.S. tanning industry abides by the strongest set of industry regulations found anywhere in the world.”
Opponents of indoor tanning at the hearing referenced a report issued in 2009 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. While the report’s conclusion suggests a correlation between indoor tanning and the incidence of melanoma, ITA officials and a number of experts cast significant doubt on the findings.
“The FDA’s own summary of the report found concerns with the methodology and how reliable the findings might be,” explained ITA executive director John Overstreet. “The report is a compilation of several studies that are many years old, includes no new information, and has been labeled in the international community as a political document, not a scientific one. Even the authors of the study, themselves, acknowledged that they need further study to come to more definitive conclusions.”
“The body of science on this issue has not changed in the past several years,” Humiston added. “We are confident that the FDA will recognize this. It is important to remember that this advisory panel’s actions are only recommendations and it is our sincere hope that the FDA will fully explore this issue and base any decision on sound science and fact. Based on what we know today, we believe there is simply not enough information or body of science to warrant significant changes in regulatory policy.”
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