Tanning beds in student housing: convenient or a health risk?

Students return every day to their apartment complexes after class.

They pass the mailroom, the gym and the tanning bed en route to their rooms.

Wait, a tanning bed?

Some Columbia apartment complexes are choosing to add tanning beds to their list of amenities. 

Park Place Columbia, Empire Columbia and Collegetown on the River are three downtown living communities for students that since 2017 have added a tanning bed as an amenity.

But do students and tanning beds mix, given the increasing concern about the risk of skin cancer from repeated use?

“There is strong evidence that individuals who use tanning beds have a significantly increased risk of skin cancer,” said Anthony Alberg, an epidemiologist and professor at the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health.

Students, of course, have easier access to tanning beds when they are present in their apartment buildings. 

Park Place employee Jacqueline Guzman said someone has to be a resident of the facility to use the beds. They are not open to the public. 

“We have at least a couple people every day (use the beds when) the office is open,” Guzman said. 

Jordan Reed, an employee at Empire, said the tanning bed there also gets used “quite often.”

“We do have a rule of going every 24 hours, and some people come right after that 24 hours is completely up, which is a little scary,” Reed said. 

Warnings of overuse and overexposure are stated on warning labels outside of tanning beds.

At Empire, the label reads, “Tanning sessions should be limited to once every 48 hours, not more than 3 sessions a week; maximum of 1560 minutes per year.”

Time under the rays matters.

“For all these kinds of skin cancer, it’s really dose related,” Alberg said. “… A dose-response relationship, means the greater the dose of exposure, the greater the risk.”

Empire, on Assembly Street, and West Columbia’s Collegetown on the River are privately owned.

Park Place, while owned by Park 7, is leased to the university. It’s featured as a residence hall on the university’s housing webpage. The page says Park Place, at Huger and Blossom streets, has the best student amenities in Columbia. The list of amenities includes two standing tanning booths.

Alberg thinks the university might not want to be associated with that particular amenity.

“I think first and foremost, the university has an obligation to promote the health and wellbeing of our students,” he said. “In my view, placing tanning beds in student housing affiliated with the university is unwise, as tanning bed use is strongly linked to the risk of skin cancer and thus harmful to students.”

USC’s internal communications manager, Collyn Taylor, said the university doesn’t control what amenities the complex offers.

“While we have students who live there, we don’t have a say in what does/ doesn’t go into the building,” he said in a text message to the Carolina News & Reporter.

The South Carolina Department of Environmental Services Regulation 61-106 for Tanning Facilities outlines the rules for tanning bed ownership and operation. 

“If you are planning to open a new indoor tanning salon in South Carolina, you must first register your equipment with SCDES’s Bureau of Radiological Health,” stated the regulation. 

The same regulations apply for tanning bed usage outside of tanning salons. 

“I know that they can come and check it whenever they want,” said Selly Ismail, an employee at  Collegetown on the River. “It has to be locked at all times and when nobody is using it, that kind of thing.”

The bed has been an amenity for two years, when it was acquired with the property, Ismail said.

Abby Hawkins is the director of marketing at Holder Properties. Holder Properties developed and operates 650 Lincoln and Gateway 737, two student housing complexes without tanning beds near the Carolina Coliseum and the Colonial Life Arena.

Gateway 737 is still under construction and is set to open in August 2025.

The executive team at Holder Properties has considered adding a tanning bed because a few residents requested it, Hawkins said.

“It’s been really interesting,” Hawkins said. “Even like, among SEC schools, to see what students are doing differently at different schools. And some of that may have to do with what else is in town and what else is around and what they need their whole property to bring to the table.”

Tanning beds always gets talked about, but Holder has never added them to any of its properties, Hawkins said.