This Peter Orszag screed against tanning was debunked yesterday but we overlooked the headline, which ran again in today’s Miami Herald.
Here’s the Miami Herald headline:
Below are melanoma death rates from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) data base. The melanoma deaths rates for white women below 40 are quite low — i.e., below 1 in 100,000 or about 1,500 per year. As the precise causes of any melanoma are unknown and potentially multiple, none of these deaths have been or can be tied to tanning of any sort.
Moreover, below is a CDC map of melanoma death rates. Note that the Sunshine State’s melanoma death rate (i.e., Florida’s) is on par with a cloudy Washington’s, and is lower than cloudy Oregon’s!
