By ALICE BRADLEY
CHRISTMAS is a time for celebration, but for Hillside resident and mother-of-three, Elizabeth Giunta, it will always mark the date she found out she had skin cancer.
Ms Giunta only visited tanning beds 20 times to get a little glow before her wedding, but she blames the sessions for the cancer, which left any longer would have been fatal.
Back in her twenties she remembers almost fainting in the stand-up solariums that blasted UV light six times the strength of the midday sun.
“I had to get out of there, get a drink, put my head between my legs,” Ms Giunta said.
Yet a recent study shows that many Australians are still not aware of the dangers associated with tanning the ‘easy’ way.
The study, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, shows a marked increase in Google searches for solariums from 2008 to 2012.
SunSmart manager Jen Makin is alarmed for Australians, who still have 15 months before government bans on solaria are effective in Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia.
Around the time of Clare Oliver’s highly publicised death in 2007, which she linked to solarium use, Google searches for solariums had declined, showing a peak in public awareness on the risk of melanoma with solaria.
After Clare’s death, regulations on solariums were introduced in Victoria, involving compulsory skin assessments, consent forms to be signed by customers and a ban on anyone under the age of 18 years.
But Ms Makin said while this legislation has encouraged a huge drop in the number of solarium businesses operating, SunSmart believes there is inadequate compliance with the regulations and that high risk groups still have easy access to solariums.
“For example, Clare Oliver would still be allowed to use a solarium if she were alive today, so a ban is the best option for Australia,” Ms Makin said.
For Ms Giunta, the ban could not come soon enough, as she still has friends who use solariums despite her appeals against it.
“I had a girlfriend the other day that had a Facebook status: ‘Going to the solarium to relax and tan’ and she’s got two boys the same age as mine,” she said.
“It felt like a slap in the face.
“When you get skin cancer, you’ve got no choice, you have to fight it, but others have a choice – to go in a solarium or not go in one, that’s a choice.”
