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Japanese react to the news about tanning machines causing cancer

uh oh

New research has found that tanning machines cause skin cancer.

In Japan many young women darken their skin at tanning salons, so the TBS News went to the streets of Tokyo to get some opinions from tanned gyaru. Here’s their report (subtitled in English):

Quite a few of those interviewed don’t intent to stop visiting tanning salons. I guess sometimes fashion is more important than health.

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21 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - August 1, 2009 at 8:16 am

Categories: Japanese Girls Tags: gyaru, tanning

Wonk

” I guess sometimes fashion is more important than health. ”
You couldn’t say it in a better way. Sadly.
http://www.hormel.com Vonskippy

Darwinism in action. Hopefully such stupid people die before they get a chance to breed and pass on their stupid genes. You expect this behaviour (and attitude) in the states, surprising to see it somewhat in Japan. Unbelievable – all that risk just for tanned skin.

tj

Is this any worse than smoking? Or eating at McDonald’s? Or drinking and driving?

There’s a lot of stupid things that people do. Deal with it.
The Overthinker

“surprising to see it somewhat in Japan”?
What, the Japanese can’t be morons? I’ve met some real doozies here.
http://colininjapan.com Colin

It’s their definition of beauty. You’re comment isn’t doing anything but making you yourself seem somewhat ignorant.

http://www.zdwonline.de Haf

If they think that tanned skin is beautiful then maybe they should just spend some time outside?

Exposing oneself to such high levels of UV rays on purpose is just idiotic. One of the customers in the clip said that those machines don’t have as many bad rays as the sun. Yeah, right, but you don’t park your skin right next to the sun usually…

jumpcut

I thought most Japanese women preferred white porcelain skin. This is surprising to me.
William

A distinction needs to be made between melanoma (the deadly malignant variety) and general skin cancer. Malignant melanoma will eventually kill you whereas other kinds of skin cancer can be dealt with fairly easily. Also, UV exposure only accounts for around 10% of the risk of getting melanoma, whereas genetics/enviornment/diet account for the other 90%. The increased risk is 75%. Even if the increase is 100%, that means that the risk is still under 20% of whatever your natural risk is. Sunlight is neccessary for the production of vitamin D as well as stimulation of hormones in the body/brain (see seasonal depression disorder for more info). Even at an excess, UV exposure from sun/tanning beds is low risk. If you read the original research this report is based on (not the news articles) they make this point clearly (actually, most of this research is from 2006 http://www.iarc.fr/en/publications/pdfs-online/wrk/wrk1/index.php). This is just more sensationalist TV that will have mothers across the world saying “I told you so!”(Though I still always put on spf 50, don’t want wrinkles)
Jack the Tripper

Yeesh, the guy and girl in the first minute were ‘uggily’ overly tanned, too vain to acknowledge the study results about the dangers.
helical

Why am I so not surprised.
The association between excessive UV ray exposure and skin cancer seems so intuitively obvious … though this news report could be playing into that perception.

In any case, I’m glad I’m content with being a pasty indoor nerd.
Skdi

Same risk as tobacco, which is a risk I consider small enough to live with:)

adfadsadsasd

Well, you won’t be living long then.

Karisu

And you know that how? I’ve know (or known of) many people who’ve smoked their whole lives that have lived well into their 80′s and sometimes 90′s.

The Overthinker

…and there are all those that don’t. This is about general trends and statistics, plus sheer common sense.

NY

Blacks in Africa are using skin-whitening cream to appear more White (that contains stuff which is bad for you)…lighter-skinned Japanese trying to tan themselves to look darker…

Anybody see the irony in all of this?

helical

Pretty soon, we’ll ALL become a median color of beige-ey brown, through creams or radiation exposure or interbreeding … one way or another.

http://www.chirimotsumoreba.net Jordan

One can only hope that such a day comes to us sooner rather than later…

James

Why Japanese girls would want to make their skin dark is beyond me. It’s ugly and makes you look like a farmer. Light skin girls are the most pretty.
brandyrain

James us white girls will disagree with you. We love getting darker.
Ozaka

And this is new news in Japan? WOW
Coming from Australia this has been news for a while.

http://aki-akiaki.blogspot.com Aki

This news is based on this article appeared in this month’s issue of The Lancet Oncology. It’s quite new. The followings are from the article.

The use of UV-emitting tanning devices is widespread in many developed countries, especially among young women. A comprehensive meta-analysis concluded that the risk of cutaneous melanoma is increased by 75% when use of tanning devices starts before 30 years of age. Additionally, several case—control studies provide consistent evidence of a positive association between the use of UV-emitting tanning devices and ocular melanoma. Therefore, the Working Group raised the classification of the use of UV-emitting tanning devices to Group 1, “carcinogenic to humans”.

Japanese react to the news about tanning machines causing cancer

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