Is There Such a Thing as a Healthy Tan?

For years, I've been telling my students in Introductory Meteorology and Earth Science classes of the hazards of overexposure to Ultraviolet (UV) radiation. UV is a known cause of skin cancer and malignant melanoma (a particularly nasty and almost always fatal form of cancer).

Nevertheless, not a day goes by in a Summer Session class where I don't see students (usually female, but often guys as well) coming in with tans that are so dark that it makes me wonder whether they spend ANY time indoors. And my warnings to them about suntan and skin cancer seem to fall on deaf ears. I am particularly vocal when it comes to the subject of tanning salons. And now, my position has been supported in a column by Dr. Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania on the MSNBC website (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25378496/).

Dr. Caplan discusses how our society has made the tanned skin a desirable thing--a "healthy glow" as it were. Here's an excerpt from Dr. Caplan's column:

"A couple of high school students in my neighborhood recently told me they are getting ready to hit the beach this summer by tuning up their suntans inside tanning beds.

When I asked one of my colleagues here at Penn, Dr. William James, a professor of dermatology, if the high school students had the right idea about getting a head start on a tan, he laughed out loud. A tan, he said, represents nothing more than damage to the skin. It is the body trying to defend itself against an environmental hazard — too much UV light. In other words, indoor tanning gets you ready for the beach in the same way that getting scalded in a hot tub gets you ready to be boiled alive."

I have a relative who is a slave to the sun. He is younger than me, and always sports a dark tan, even in winter. But his skin is already beginning to show signs of aging--wrinkles, dark spots--that normally wouldn't appear for years. Overexposure to UV ages the skin prematurely, and robs it of its natural elasticity. And then, of course, there's that cancer thing.

In my opinion, anyone who spends money on tanning salons must be incredibly vain, stupid or both. And anyone who spends considerable time in the sun without using sunblock of AT LEAST SPF 15 (SPF 30 would be better) is asking for trouble down the line. Save your skin---skip the tanning bed.

Lots of Thunderstorms

It seems to me that we are experiencing more than our usual share of thunderstorms here in Connecticut this summer. Joe Brumbach's monumental 1965 work, The Climate of Connecticut tells us that most Connecticut thunderstorms occur in the northwest hills. Thunderstorm frequency drops off as one heads south and east towards the Rhode Island shoreline. The reason, ostensibly, is that cool breezes coming off Long Island Sound tend to stabilize the lower atmosphere near the shoreline, reducing the frequency of thunderstorms.

But this summer, the entire state seems to be getting a lot of thunderstorms. Over the past two weeks, it feels like there are storms across the state on an almost daily basis. The atmosphere has been unstable for quite awhile now, and it only takes a little local heating, or a weak cold front moving across the state to set off the fireworks.

So, is it global warming that's giving us all the thunderstorm activity? Who's to say. We've already had temperatures reach 99 degrees this month, far earlier than normal. But early June heat waves are not that uncommon here. I remember a doozy of a heat wave in early June of 1984. But one of the main features of the global warming model is an increase in extremes of weather, and a lot more storminess. I guess we'll just have to wait on this one. The jury is still out.