Tanning facility compliance with state and federal regulations in North Carolina: a poor performance

Little is known about the compliance of commercial tanning facilities with regulations governing their operation. We inspected some tanning parlors to assess the degree to which they follow federal and North Carolina state regulations.

An inspection of 32 tanning facilities was conducted between March and May 1991 as part of an ongoing effort to educate tanning parlor operators and proprietors about UV light safety. Compliance with each of 21 distinct state and federal requirements was recorded for each facility.

Only 1 of 32 facilities was in complete compliance with both state and federal regulations. The number of infractions ranged from none to 21 (mean [+/- SD] 7.1 +/- 4.1). Nineteen percent of facilities had timers that were not within the required +/- 10% accuracy level. Twenty-two percent also had timers that did not meet Code of Federal Regulations standards. The estimated proportion of the total light output in the UVB spectrum ranged from 0.5% to 5.0% (mean 4.25% +/- 0.95%).

These limited data suggest that many commercial tanning establishments are not uniformly compliant with regulations. Although we cannot extrapolate these findings to other states, we anticipate that facilities in states with less rigorous regulations than North Carolina have similar or inferior safety profiles.