Word: duke
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Jodi Duke was 16 when she went to a tanning salon for the first time. The fair-skinned redhead says she just wanted luminous, golden skin, like her friends' at school...
...began with occasional 20-min. visits to the salon close to Duke's high school in Denver. But soon the low-intensity tanning bed wasn't cutting it anymore. So Duke switched to one with a more powerful sunlamp and started going to the salon more often. "First it was once every couple of weeks. Then once every week. And later it was every day," she says. (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens...
...three years after lying on her first sun bed, Duke went to see a doctor to get a mole removed. Routine tests confirmed that the mole was a malignant tumor - Duke had advanced-stage melanoma and was wheeled into surgery that week. A chunk of flesh from her right arm was removed, and a year of intensive cancer therapy followed. She survived without serious complications...
...Duke thinks it was the years of regular tanning that caused her melanoma, and the vast majority of scientific literature supports her theory. Exposure to ultraviolet light, whether from the sun or a tanning bed, increases the risk of melanoma, the deadliest type of skin cancer, and teenagers - especially pale-skinned redheads like Duke - are considered among the most vulnerable. In July the cancer-research wing of the World Health Organization (WHO) added tanning beds and sunlamps to its list of human-cancer-causing agents. "The risk of cutaneous melanoma is increased by 75% when use of tanning devices starts...
Still, 13 years after Duke's diagnosis, there is no nationwide regulation governing the use of tanning salons by young people. According to a 2004 survey, 1 in 10 youths ages 11 to 18 uses a tanning bed each year. Wisconsin is the only state that bans indoor tanning among kids under 16; in 28 other states, teens under 16 need parental consent or accompaniment. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommendation - for adults - is to keep tanning-bed exposure to no more than three times a week during the first week of tanning. And yet a survey...