Study Finds Tanning Salons as Common as Starbucks in Some Towns
Posted on March 9, 2009
NBC News reports that a new study on tanning salons by San Diego State University has found that they are as common as Starbucks and McDonalds. They were expecting to find a lot of tanning salons in their count but they did not expect them to be as prevalent as the major food chains.
Dr. Joni Mayer, professor of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences at the Graduate School of Public Health in San Diego State University, told NBC News, "Just to put the number into context, we counted the number of Starbucks and McDonalds, two frequently occurring businesses. We knew that there were a lot of indoor tanning facilities but we didn't really know that they would exceed the number of Starbucks and McDonalds in most cases."
There would not be so many salons if they weren't profitable. The cities with the highest density of tanning beds are Charleston, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Akron, Portland and Columbia. Charleston has 18 tanning salons for its 53,000 residents.
The study also found that teens living nearby tanning salons are more likely to have used them. Discount pricing also makes teens use the tanning salons more frequently.
Dr. Joni Mayer also says, "We interviewed 6,000 teens across the country and those living within two miles of a tanning salon were significantly more likely to have used indoor tanning than those who didn't. There's a significant association between living close to a tanning salon and using indoor tanning."
Another factor that comes into play is the cheap pricing. Most salons offer discount packages. Interest in tanning doesn't seem to have faded among teenagers even though there are well known and dangerous health risks. Despite the health risks and alternatives like bronzers and spray-on tans there are still one million people tanning in tanning salons on an average day according to the ADA - and 70% of them are females aged 16 to 29.