Sunbeds, beauty and melanoma

In this issue, Oliver et al.1 report the findings of a recent survey of sunbed usage and ultraviolet (UV) radiation emissions in two Local Authority areas in Scotland. They found a greater prevalence of sunbeds emitting high levels of UVB compared with their previous survey in 1998 and that young women constituted the largest group of sunbed users. The observation that the prevalence of sunbed use by young women is much greater than by young men or older women has been confirmed in many previous studies. What actually constitutes prevalence in this context has been defined variously as any use, use in the past 6 or 12 months, or frequent use in the past 12 months, and this varying definition explains why, in their review of 12 studies, Lazovich and Forster2 found that prevalence of use by young female adolescents varied from 14% to 75%, with a mean value weighted by sample size of 43%. A comparative weighted mean prevalence for young males was 18%.