WARNING - The birth control pill may be as deadly as tobacco. Sound ridiculous? Of course it does. Yet that exact line of thinking is what was spoon-fed to the North American media last week, producing inaccurate headlines suggesting that getting a suntan is as risky as being exposed to arsenic, plutonium, mustard gas or smoking cigarettes. Get Real! They failed to highlight that birth control, red wine, and salted fish are also listed in the exact same risk category.

Smokers have 14-22 times the risk of lung cancer compared to non-smokers, according to the American Cancer Society. In contrast, suntanners have no statistically different risk of melanoma as compared to non-tanners, according to the sum of research on this topic. In fact, indoor workers get melanoma more often than outdoor workers.

So what should the stories have said? If they wanted to be completely honest they should have said "repeated sunburns could be harmful, and that’s why UV light from any source is classified as a carcinogen".  

Let's not lose sight of the fact that humans, like everything on the planet, NEED sunlight and UV to live, that 97 percent of Canadians are at risk of vitamin D deficiency because we don’t get enough sun and that no study EVER has isolated suntanning in a non-burning fashion as a risk factor for anything.