Do tanning beds cause skin cancer?

Making the observation

• How many watts are in a tanning bed?
• Smaller, home tanning beds usually have 12 to 28 100 watt lamps while systems found in tanning salons can consist of 24 to 60 lamps, each of 100 to 200 watts.

State the problem

• Do tanning beds cause skin cancer?

Background information

• Ultraviolet radiation: (UV ) are visible rays that are part of the energy that comes from the sun. UV radiation can damage the skin and cause melanoma (which is another form of skin cancer) and other types of skin cancer.

Continued..

• Tanning Beds: An apparatus used for tanning, consisting of a bank of sunlamp tubes, typically horizontal for lying on, with another above.

Hypothesis

• We believe that using tanning beds, can cause skin cancer because of the wattage of the ultraviolet light.

Experiment

• The independent variable are the tanning beds, the dependent is the skin cancer, and the controlled in the amount of wattage in the tanning bed.
• A woman using a tanning bed at 200 watts will have a better chance of getting skin cancer than a woman using a tanning bed at 50 watts.

Gather and analyzing data

• About 90 percent of nonmelanoma skin cancers are associated with exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun.
• With a higher wattage of UV light, there will be a greater chance of cancer.

Possible Outcomes

• It is more likely that the tanning beds will cause skin cancer due to the wattage.

Before UV.

Perfect UV.

After to much UV.