Most young adult women who regularly visit indoor tanning salons do support the introduction of policies to make it safer, but are against a total ban.

The new findings appear in Translational Behavioral Medicine: Practice, Policy, Research.

By 2015, more than 40 US states had already introduced stricter regulations to limit indoor tanning, especially among minors. New regulations issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have seen tanning devices reclassified as moderate- to high-risk medical devices. The FDA also has proposed a set of new regulations that highlight the health risks associated with indoor tanning.

Confidential self-report online surveys were completed by 356 non-Hispanic women in Washington DC who were all between the ages of 18 and 30 years old and had indoor tanned at least once in the past year. The women were asked about how regularly they tanned, their attitudes, perceptions and beliefs towards the practice and how they felt about new policies being proposed to regulate the industry.

There was a high level of support for prevention policies similar to those that have recently been proposed by the FDA. Three in every four participants (74 percent) supported policies to prevent children younger than 18 years from indoor tanning. About the same number of women (77.6 percent) were also in favor of stronger health warnings being placed on the tanning devices themselves.

Support for a total ban was very low, with only one in every ten participants backing such a notion. Countries like Australia and Brazil have already banned indoor tanning.

"Non-Hispanic white young adult women who indoor tan, the primary consumers of indoor tanning and a high-risk population, largely support indoor tanning prevention policies implemented by many state governments and those currently under review for national enactment," says study author Darren Mays, PhD, MPH, an Assistant Professor of Oncologyat Georgetown University Medical Centerin Washington, DC. "Given the low levels of support for a total indoor tanning ban, support for other potential policies such as increasing the minimum age to 21 should be investigated to inform future steps to reduce indoor tanning and the associated health risks."