Sunbed Tube Legislation

To promote safe tanning, European Legislation is advising a limit of 0.3W/m2 output for all sunbed tubes.

 

This safe tanning advice is based on scientific advice to European Member States, which represents the intensity of the midday sun in the summer in the Mediterranean. In other words this safe limit is intended to match sunbed output to the maximum that human Caucasians have biologically evolved to cope with.

The making available to consumers of a sunbed in the context of providing a service is deemed to be a supply of a product under the General Product Safety Regulations 2005 (GPSR), and as such the product should be a safe. It is an offence to supply a dangerous product, namely one that is not a safe product.

Technical interpretation of what makes a sunbed a safe product is taken from relevant European or National Standards, which in this case is the aforementioned SS EN 60335-2-27. This standard was amended to take effect from April 2009, and the relevant amendment reflected authoritative scientific advice issued in 2006 and a subsequent 2007 Declaration by European experts, Le. if your irradiance level exceeds 0.3 Wm/e2 it could be deemed as a dangerous product under GPSR.

At this stage any action proposed by local council Trading Standards will be advisory, and salon owners will be given a reasonable period of time to make the necessary actions to rectify the problem. However, should salons owners not take positive steps to rectify sunbeds, or alternatively to remove them from service, a more formal action may be taken in the future. Please check with your local councils for further details.

If you are not in a position to convert all of your sunbeds at once, we advise that you set out a programme for 0.3 conversion beginning with the next sunbeds to require routine re-lamping, and converting the other ones as they become due for new lamps.