The Johnson City Press reports that the NIH’s grant is intended to facilitate Professor Hillhouse and ETSU’s efforts to get the word out to teenage girls about the risks and dangers of indoor tanning. Hillhouse’s messages will highlight the physical appearance-related risks associated with indoor tanning. Chief among these risks: sunspots and skin wrinkling.
As discussed here on many occasions, the World Health Organization has added indoor tanning to its top carcinogen risk group, joining poisons like tobacco, arsenic, and formaldehyde. Despite all of this, young women are still not heeding the warnings – even though they grow louder and clearer.
Perhaps grants like this one can serve as a grass roots model for starting to change attitudes towards indoor tanning. Maybe the best way to go at this health risk is to appeal to vanity (the same reason many people tan). “Indoor tanning can be ugly”. Our hats are off to the NIH, to professor Hillhouse, and to ETSU for their creative efforts.
Assisted by Zachary Kady