The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies ultraviolet radiation from sun beds as carcinogenic to humans, alongside tobacco and asbestos. A 2007 study by the agency determined that people who start tanning regularly before age 30 have a 75 percent higher risk of developing melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer. Other studies have reached similar conclusions.

The suntanning organization argues that the WHO study focused primarily on tanning devices in people’s homes and in doctors’ offices, not sun beds in professional salons.

The association plans to fund its own scientific research and studies. It’s hired the Washington lobbying firm mCapitol Management and New York public relations firm Global Strategy Group to make the case for indoor tanning to lawmakers and the public.

Total “sun abstinence” isn’t practical, said Cunningham, who said she tanned indoors twice a week herself and wasn’t worried about developing cancer.

“When you develop a tan, it’s like developing a natural sunscreen,” she said. “The issue, really, with the risk revolves around sunburn, and that’s something a professional salon doesn’t do.”

But dermatologists say there’s no such thing as a safe tan.

“A sunburn means you’re actually destroying cells, but certainly a tan means you’re getting enough sun to induce mutations,” said Sandra Lee, a dermatologist in Upland, Calif., and a member of the American Academy of Dermatology. “A tan already means damage.”

In questioning the prevailing scientific research, members of the American Suntanning Association are just trying to save their jobs and their industry, Lee said.

“The thing that concerns me the most about this is that it just gives ammunition to youngsters saying, ‘Oh it’s fine to do this,’ and they’re only going to suffer later,” Lee said. “They’re really doing a disservice, especially to impressionable youngsters.”

Almost 28 million Americans tan indoors every year, including 2.3 million teenagers, according to the dermatology academy.

A report released last year by leading Democrats on the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce said tanning salons frequently provided false and misleading health information to teenage clients.

Ninety percent of salon employees told committee investigators posing as fair-skinned teenage girls that indoor tanning wouldn’t present any health risk, according to the report. More than half the salons denied a link between indoor tanning and cancer, some dismissing the danger as “myth” or “hype.”

Four out of five salons touted benefits from indoor tanning, including vitamin D production, weight loss, treatment of depression and prevention of arthritis, lupus and osteoporosis. “Several salons even said that tanning would prevent cancer,” the report said.

Donna Regen, of Allen, Texas, got similar reassurance from salon employees when she asked them whether tanning was safe for her fair-skinned daughter, Jaime.

Jaime used tanning beds several times a week in high school during the 1990s, Regen said in an interview.

“It was starting to come out about the dangers of tanning beds, but people just weren’t real informed, and I wasn’t real informed,” Regen said. “I went in to talk about it and get information, and they told me that this would be good for her skin, that she needed a base tan to protect her from the sun. It was a con job and I bought it, and so I gave my permission to use the tanning beds.”

Jaime was diagnosed with melanoma when she was 20. Eventually the cancer spread to her liver, then her brain. She died in 2007 at age 29.

Regen said parental consent laws didn’t go far enough. She wants everyone under 18 banned from using sun beds, along with stricter government regulation of tanning salons.

The Food and Drug Administration regulates tanning beds as “Class I” medical devices, a category subject to the least regulatory control. Class I devices include tongue depressors, medical tape and bandages.

“It’s unfortunate that the government has to step in, and I understand that people don’t want the government in our lives, but something has to be done,” Regen said.

“I understand that it’s their livelihood,” she said of salon owners and employees. “They want to look good so that people will come in and use their services. But they’re selling cancer.”