Nearly half of the top-ranked college campuses in the United States have indoor tanning facilities, a new study shows.

In order to assess the availability of indoor tanning facilities on college campuses, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School conducted a study evaluating 125 top colleges and universities. The results, which were published on Oct. 29, state that 48 percent of campuses have indoor tanning on campus or in off-campus housing.

Syracuse University has no tanning beds on main campus. But there are easily accessible tanning facilities on South Campus.

According to an Oct. 29 NewsChannel 9 story, 96 percent of housing that offers tanning facilities, like University Village at SU, offer the tanning service free of charge. The researchers also found that more than 500,000 students have access to tanning beds on college campuses. At University Village, students can go tanning once a day, but they must first sign a waiver.

While the study results say indoor tanning is most prevalent in Midwestern and Southern schools, Daniella Popa, a freshman nutrition major, thinks the Syracuse weather might cause students to use indoor tanning facilities more.

“People could just want to keep a little color in the winter,” Popa said.

About 14 percent of colleges allow campus cash cards to be used to pay for tanning, according to the study. Indoor tanning was available on campus in 12 percent of colleges and in off-campus housing in more than 42 percent of colleges, the study showed.

Allison Gasparini, a freshman physics major, said she is not entirely shocked by the high percentage of indoor tanning facilities near college campuses, but is disheartened that people continue to use tanning beds despite the risk for skin cancer.

“I don’t do it because it’s really bad for you,” Gasparini said. “But I also think that a lot of people aren’t really sure about the risks of using tanning beds, so I think that’s why a lot people still use them.”

Popa said she thinks that the real danger does not come from using tanning beds intermittently, but from using them excessively.

“I use them,” she said. “I think if you use them once a month or something like that you’re fine. It’s only really bad when you use them excessively because they can give you skin cancer.”

Indoor tanning especially poses a threat to users in adolescence and early adulthood because young people are more susceptible to getting melanoma, a form a skin cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control website.

People who use tanning beds once a month before the age of 35 increase the chance for melanoma risk by 75 percent, according to the Melanoma Foundation New England.

“I saw that a lot of people in my high school used them a lot,” Popa said. “High school and college kids definitely use them more than adults.”

Published on November 6, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Rachel: rsandler@syr.edu