The International Agency for Research on Cancer announced Wednesday that it had elevated sunbeds, used by tens of millions of people for tanning, to its highest cancer risk category.
Classified in 1992 and a "probable" cancer agent, research since then has left no doubt that soaking up UV rays at tanning salons significantly enhances the chances of developing the disease, the World Health Organisation (WHO) agency found.
"The use of sunbeds is carcinogenic to humans. It causes melanoma of the skin, and melanoma of the eye," said Vincent Cogliano, an IARC researcher who led the new assessment.
"I cannot see any reason why a healthy person should use them," he told AFP by phone.
The risk of melanoma -- the most lethal form of skin cancer -- increases by 75 percent when use of tanning devices starts before the age of 30, according to the findings, published in the British medical journal The Lancet Oncology.
The link between artificial tanning devices and cancer is not new. The WHO and national health agencies have long cautioned against using sunbeds, much as they have warned about the ill effects of overexposure to the sun.
But threshold of scientific proof is high, and required additional research on animals as well as epidemiological studies of cancer rates among humans before sunbeds could be labeled -- along with tobacco, asbestos and alcohol -- as a carcinogen.
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