We’ve always felt a little iffy about sunbeds. We can’t really blame people for using them; tanned skin has become a commodity that loads of people are encouraged to aspire to, but then again using them increases an under-35 year-old's risk of developing skin melanoma by nearly 60%
Our attitude is a bit more ‘don’t hate the player, hate the game’, but we’d also like to inform people who might be tempted to use a sunbed (despite the hot weather we’ve got right now) that they’ve just got totally gross.
Why? You know the sunbeds people lie on? Well, that glass might get heated by the UV rays coming out of the bulbs on the other side of it, but that doesn’t get rid of some of the grosser things some previous sunbed inhabitants might have brought in with them.
Bacteria which lives on the skin can be transferred to the sunbed and then gets warmed up: ‘Then it [the bacterium] becomes stronger and hardier’, Dermatologist Dawn Marie Davis, an associate professor of dermatology and paediatrics at the Mayo Clinic, told Yahoo Health, reports The Independent.
‘Then if you sweat, that only adds to the bacteria or virus’s ability to grow, and then if you have a nick or cut in your skin, which is very common, then you’re much more likely to acquire the infection.’ Um, yeah, we’d probs rather be our natural skin tone…
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.