Health experts in Australia say they are deeply concerned about a resurgence of solariums, more than a decade after the commercial use of the tanning units was banned across the country. The worry now centres on the personal use of solariums, which are being marketed to the public while operators make a profit from each session. According to specialists, the danger has not changed with the shift away from high street studios, and anyone walking into a solarium is increasing their risk of skin cancer. The renewed alarm reflects a fear that an old public health problem is quietly returning under a new guise.
Because the machines are illegal, they are not advertised through obvious shopfronts that announce a solarium is on the premises. Instead, experts say the sessions are being promoted through social media, which is simultaneously glamorising tanning and pointing customers towards where they can use the devices. The units are frequently set up in people's backyards or, in cases reported in the media, in the back of shops and warehouses. In each of these settings, the people running the solariums are profiting from a personal-use model that sidesteps the existing commercial ban.
The reliance on social media has raised particular concern about who is being drawn in, with experts warning that young people are being caught up in the trend. The core public health message is blunt and unchanged: any tan is not a safe tan. A tan is described as a sign of skin damage, and any change in skin colour is presented as evidence that DNA damage has already occurred. For specialists, that means even a single session carries a measurable cost to long term health, regardless of how the result is marketed online.
The strength of the radiation involved is central to the warning. Solariums emit very high levels of ultraviolet radiation, up to six times the amount of the summer sun in Australia, a country that already records some of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world. Experts point to a direct causal link between solarium use and an increased risk of skin cancer, which was the basis for the original prohibition. That evidence is the reason the units were banned for commercial use more than ten years ago, rather than simply restricted or regulated.
The path to that ban was shaped by personal stories that made the risk impossible to ignore. The best known was the case of Claire Oliver, a passionate consumer advocate who helped accelerate the move to outlaw commercial solariums in Australia. Working alongside public health professionals, oncologists and dermatologists, she became a prominent voice in a campaign that linked the devices directly to serious harm. At the time she was 26 years old, and her advocacy is credited with helping turn a medical concern into firm regulation.
Experts now fear that the lessons from that period have not reached a new generation. They describe a fresh cohort of younger people who are only learning about solariums now and who were not present a decade ago when the original warnings were widely circulated. The way people receive information has also changed dramatically over those years, with social media replacing the channels that once carried the public health message. That shift, specialists argue, calls for a new wave of messaging tailored to how young audiences actually consume information today.
There is a national campaign, supported by the federal government, aimed at addressing the dangers of tanning and using online influence to promote positive sun safety messaging rather than the glamour of a tan. Even so, experts acknowledge there is still more to do, and they frame the response as a combination of education and the enforcement of the laws already in place. Attention is also turning to the penalties facing those who supply the machines, with questions raised about the fines for providers and how the existing rules can be enforced against an underground market that has moved into homes and back rooms.