INDIA


No Debate on Air Pollution in Parliament This Session, Minister Makes Untrue Claim on AQI and Disease Link

Aathira Perinchery
20/Dec/2025

THE WIRE

Parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju blamed members of the opposition for ‘stalling’ the debate on air pollution.

Union Minister of State for Environment Kirti Vardhan Singh, centre, interacts with Congress MP Deepender Singh Hooda, back right, and others during the Winter session of Parliament, in New Delhi, Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. Photo: PTI.

Bengaluru: Delhi has been witnessing very high levels of air pollution for consecutive days now but the parliament did not discuss the issue for the entirety of the Winter Session, from December 1 to 19.

Meanwhile, the union government has claimed in parliament that there is no proof for any direct link between air pollution and ill health – this time, lung diseases.

In a written reply on Thursday, December 18, the minister of state of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Kirti Vardhan Singh said that there is “no conclusive data” to establish a “direct correlation between higher AQI levels and lung diseases”.

No debate in parliament

The Air Quality Index (AQI, a measure of air pollution that takes into account major pollutants in the atmosphere such as fine particulate matter) in Delhi at 4 pm on December 19 was 374, according to the daily bulletin by the Central Pollution Control Board.

This marks the ninth consecutive day that air quality in the national capital has been in the “Very Poor” or “Severe” category this month. The AQI in the city on December 18 according to the CPCB was 373. This is the worst air quality that Delhi has witnessed in December since 2018, Hindustan Times had reported.

The parliament was supposed to discuss the issue of air pollution in the Lok Sabha on Thursday. However, this did not happen and was pushed to the next day. It was not discussed on this day — the final day of the Parliament’s Winter Session, December 19 — either.

Parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju blamed members of the opposition for ‘stalling’ the debate on air pollution, claiming that the Union government had been ready to discuss it.

“…[T]he opposition’s behaviour during the debate in Lok Sabha on Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Bill was unacceptable. Some of the opposition members even stood atop the desks of the table office and (Lok Sabha) Secretary General. Some Congress members also conveyed that there was no need for a debate on pollution. That is why the issue could not be taken up for discussion,” PTI quoted him as saying on Friday, December 19.

No ‘conclusive data’

A day before, on December 18, junior environment minister Kirti Vardhan Singh had said that said that there is “no conclusive data” to establish a “direct correlation between higher AQI levels and lung diseases”.
Advertisement

Singh was responding to questions posed by Laxmikant Bajpayee, a Member of Parliament from the same party that Singh belongs to — the Bharatiya Janata Party. Bajpayee, an Ayurveda physician by training, had asked if the government “is aware that studies and medical tests have confirmed that due to prolonged hazardous AQI levels in Delhi/NCR, masses are developing lung fibrosis, an irreversible reduction in lung capacity”.

He also asked whether the lung elasticity (the ability of lungs to expand while breathing) of citizens in the Delhi-NCR has drastically reduced to almost 50% as compared to lung elasticity of citizens living in cities having good AQI levels, and if the government proposes any solution to save the millions of the city’s residents from deadly diseases like pulmonary fibrosis, COPD, reduced lung function and continuously declining lung elasticity due to air pollution.

Singh replied that while air pollution is one of the “triggering factors” for respiratory ailments and associated diseases, there is “no conclusive data which establishes a direct correlation between higher AQI levels and lung diseases”.

Singh is wrong.

Numerous scientific studies show a clear link between air pollution and lung diseases. And higher AQI levels reflect higher levels of pollution — a concept that the union environment ministry too relies on to issue advisories when pollution levels worsen. On December 13, for instance, an order of the Commission for Air Quality Management had advised children, the elderly and people with respiratory, cardiovascular, cerebrovascular or other chronic diseases to avoid outdoor activities and stay indoors “as much as possible”, and to wear masks if required to move outdoors — because Delhi’s AQI had reached 448 that evening, and was in the “Severe” category.

Why Singh is wrong

A 2025 study published in the journal Environmental Pollution analysed air quality data from two monitoring stations in Tamil Nadu across four years and screened 3,549 patients for respiratory illnesses. The researchers (from institutes including the National Institute of Research in Tuberculosis under the Indian Council of Medical Research — the apex body in India for the formulation, coordination and promotion of biomedical research) found a “strong correlation between pollution levels and respiratory diseases”.

Another study published in Scientific Reports in 2023 found a “significant positive correlation” between high AQI levels in India and a higher rate of lung cancer (though it also found that factors such as smoking habits and occupational exposures may “obscure” this relationship).

A study published this year analysed the relationship between respiratory diseases and air pollution across 27 countries including India over a four-year period (2018–2021). It found that overall, higher pollutant levels correlated with an increased number of COPD cases.

“This aligns with known biological mechanisms where these pollutants exacerbate airway inflammation and chronic respiratory damage,” the study noted.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD is a lung disease that causes restricted airflow and breathing problems. According to the World Health Organisation, smoking and air pollution are the most common causes of COPD, which is the fourth leading cause of death worldwide. It is incurable.

Indian researchers are even trying to develop methods to predict lung disease severity based on the AQI. A study by Indian scientists that was presented at last year’s Asian Conference on Intelligent Technologies developed a way to predict air quality using image data and then assess lung disease severity based on AQI. Their models had very high testing accuracies (around 87% for AQI and 97% for lung disease severity), the preprint of their study shows.

‘CAQM is working on this’

Singh in his response in Parliament on Thursday also said that the government has established the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) under the Commission for Air Quality Management in NCR and Adjoining Areas Act, 2021 “for better coordination, research, identification and resolution of problems of air pollution” in the Delhi- NCR and adjoining areas.

He added that the CAQM has been provided powers under the Act to take measures and issue directions to various agencies in the NCR and has been addressing the issue of air pollution in a “collective, collaborative and participative” way, involving all major stakeholders, Singh said.

Currently, the CAQM has imposed Stage 4 of the Graded Action Response Plan, which are a series of progressively restrictive measures that the Delhi-NCR region has to implement with worsening AQI levels to curb dust, fumes and other sources of air pollution.

Under Stage 4, measures include barring the entry of non-BS VI vehicles into Delhi, halting construction activity, and no fuel for vehicles without a PUC certificate.

However, allegations of rampant, ongoing construction have surfaced during this time. On December 16, AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj had posted a video on social media to show that construction is still progressing unrestrained even within Delhi limits.

GRAP 4 is bullshit !!

Under the patronage of BJP’s high profile Minister, right under GRAP 4, construction going on throughout the night at Delhi

Totally illegal construction in 2.5 acre farmhouse !!

H-14 Pushpanjali farms, Delhi

Guess the name of the Minister ?@MCD_Delhi pic.twitter.com/s6IIqq3ws1

— Saurabh Bharadwaj (@Saurabh_MLAgk) December 16, 2025

Government Says it Has No Data to Link Deaths, Diseases With Air Pollution


The Wire Staff
10/Dec/2025

In its answer to a question by Trinamool Congress MP Derek O'Brien, junior health minister Prataprao Jadhav admitted that “air pollution is one of the triggering factors for respiratory ailments and associated diseases”.

A woman crosses a road while covering her face to shield herself from pollution as air quality continues to worsen across northern India, in Gurugram, Haryana, Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2025. Photo: PTI.

New Delhi: The Union government has said in parliament that there is “no conclusive national data to establish a direct correlation between deaths or diseases occurring exclusively due to air pollution” at a time when the pollution in several Indian cities and most visibly, the national capital, has been a major source of concern and ill health.

The level of pollutants in Delhi’s air has sparked protests from residents, and their heavy-handed quelling by law enforcement.

In its answer to a question by Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’Brien, junior health minister Prataprao Jadhav said that “air pollution is one of the triggering factors for respiratory ailments and associated diseases”.

O’Brien had asked:

Will the Minister of Health and Family Welfare be pleased to state:-

(a) whether it is a fact that over 1.7 million deaths in 2022 were attributable to PM2.5 in the country;
Advertisement

(b) whether it is also a fact that outdoor air pollution caused losses of about 9.5 per cent of GDP;

(c) Government’s official estimate of deaths from air pollution in the last five years State/UT-wise;

(d) whether Government has assessed the economic loss due to air pollution, if so, the details thereof; and

(e) whether any plan has been formulated to reduce PM2.5 exposure with time-bound targets, if so, the details thereof?

In reply, Jadhav said, “There is no conclusive data available in the country to establish direct correlation of death/ disease exclusively due to air pollution. Air pollution is one of the triggering factors for respiratory ailments and associated diseases.”

He then appeared to attribute the impact of air pollution on the human body to a multitude of factors, saying, “Health effects of air pollution are synergistic manifestation of factors which include food habits, occupational habits, socioeconomic status, medical history, immunity, heredity, etc. of the individuals.”

In an annexure, Jadhav listed the “several steps” taken by the Union government to “address air pollution issues.”

It cited the implementation of National Programme for Climate Change and Human Health (NPCCHH) under which it has developed a “Health Adaptation Plan” on health issues due to Air Pollution and a “State Action Plan” on climate change and human health for all 36 State/UTs.

“This State specific Action Plan contains dedicated chapter on air pollution which suggests interventions to reduce the impact,” the government said.

The Union government also cited health ministry public health advisories to states and Union territories “suggesting ways to reduce the impact of air pollution” and nationwide public awareness campaigns on World Environment Day (5th June), International Day of
Clean Air for blue skies (7th September) and National Pollution Control Day (2nd December) as ways in which it has tried to beat the effects of air pollution on health.

The government claimed it has developed “dedicated training modules” for programme managers, medical officers and nurses, nodal officers, women and children, traffic police, frontline workers like ASHA, and so on.

It also cited communication material on air pollution-related illnesses, capacity building workshops for state-level trainers, early warning systems, the Swachh Bharat Mission and the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana “which aims to safeguard the health of women and children by providing them with a clean cooking fuel”.

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has launched National Clean Air programme in 2019 as a national-level strategy to reduce air pollution levels across the country, the government said in its reply.

 

SLU research shows surge in alcohol-related liver disease driving ‘deaths of despair’

Saint Louis University

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

St. Louis, MO — Researchers at Saint Louis University School of Medicine say deaths from alcohol-related liver disease have surged in recent years, and the increase is hitting people without a college degree the hardest. While nearly every demographic group is seeing higher death rates—including those with college degrees—the gap between economically disadvantaged groups and more affluent ones is growing, according to new research published in Alcohol: Clinical & Experimental Research.

Alcohol-related liver disease is one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. Experts say its growing impact can’t be explained by changes in drinking habits alone. Instead, the data reveal a troubling trend: even when drinking patterns are similar, people with fewer economic resources suffer more severe health consequences.

In the study, researchers looked at alcohol-related liver disease death rates among Americans aged 25 and older to explore whether these patterns fit the “deaths of despair” theory—rising mortality among working-age adults without a college degree linked to worsening social and economic conditions and health-related challenges.

“Alcohol-related liver disease is claiming lives at an accelerating pace, and the burden falls hardest on those with fewer resources,” said Richard Grucza, Ph.D., professor of family and community medicine at SLU and lead author of the study. “This isn’t just about drinking—it’s about the complex interplay of social, economic, and potentially modifiable health risk factors that put certain populations at greater risk.”

Key Findings

The study shows deaths from alcohol-related liver disease jumped 63% between 2001 and 2020, rising from nine to 17 deaths per 100,000 people. While rates climbed across nearly all groups, the increases were uneven:

• White Americans experienced the steepest increases, while rates among Black Americans remained relatively stable.
• Women experienced a bigger proportional increase than men, likely due to changing drinking patterns and their higher biological vulnerability to liver damage.
• Among women without a college degree—especially women over 45—the rise was sharpest, echoing the “deaths of despair” trend tied to economic hardship.
• Alcohol-related liver disease death rates among college-educated women nearly doubled.
• Young adults aged 25–34 faced almost triple the risk, and rates also surged among those aged 55–64.

The gap between education levels widened dramatically. For example, middle-aged men aged 55–74 without a college degree now face death rates as high as 50 per 100,000. Researchers say these disparities likely reflect a mix of factors—such as obesity, diabetes, smoking, and binge drinking—combined with social and economic stress.

The findings underscore the need for targeted alcohol guidelines and interventions that address medical, behavioral, and social risks, especially for vulnerable groups.

Other study authors include Joel Jihwan Hwang, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Saint Louis University School of Medicine; Jeffrey Scherrer, Ph.D., AHEAD Research Institute, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Saint Louis University School of Medicine; Jennifer K. Bello-Kottenstette, M.D., Department of Family and Community Medicine, Saint Louis University School of Medicine; Sarah C. Gebauer, M.D., AHEAD Research Institute, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Saint Louis University School of Medicine; Ruizhi Huang; Joanne Salas, AHEAD Research Institute, Saint Louis University School of Medicine; Jinmyoung Cho, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Saint Louis University School of Medicine; Jeffrey Scherrer, Ph.D., AHEAD Research Institute, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Saint Louis University School of Medicine; and Kevin Young Xu, Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

About Saint Louis University 

Founded in 1818, Saint Louis University is one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious Catholic research institutions. Rooted in Jesuit values and its pioneering history as the first university west of the Mississippi River, SLU offers more than 13,300 students a rigorous, transformative education that challenges and prepares them to make the world a better place. As a nationally recognized leader in research and innovation, SLU is an R1 research university, advancing groundbreaking, life-changing discoveries that promote the greater good.

About Saint Louis School of Medicine

Established in 1836, Saint Louis University School of Medicine has the distinction of awarding the first medical degree west of the Mississippi River. The school educates physicians and biomedical scientists, conducts medical research, and provides health care on a local, national and international level. Research at the school seeks new cures and treatments in five key areas: cancer, liver disease, heart/lung disease, aging and brain disease, and infectious diseases.

About AHEAD Institute

The Advanced HEAlth Data (AHEAD) Research Institute at Saint Louis University is a comprehensive center for data-driven innovation and research to improve the health of individuals and populations. The institute brings together researchers from various fields and disciplines to help improve patient and population health, advance the quality of health care and decrease health care costs. The new institute will utilize and develop data resources, novel analytic methods, predictive modeling, machine learning, and integrated wearable health devices and collaborate with national research networks.

---

Journal

Alcohol Clinical and Experimental Research

DOI

10.1111/acer.70194 

Article Title

Educational disparities in alcohol-related liver disease mortality in the 21st century: Beyond deaths of despair?

Researchers discover bias in AI models that analyze pathology samples

The team created a new tool that reduces bias and improves cancer diagnosis across populations

Harvard Medical School

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Pathology images of human tissue samples.

view more 

Credit: The Cancer Genome Atlas

At a glance:

• A new study reveals that pathology AI models for cancer diagnosis perform unequally across demographic groups.
• The researchers identified three explanations for the bias and developed a tool that reduced it.
• The findings highlight the need to systematically check for bias in pathology AI to ensure equitable care for patients.

Pathology has long been the cornerstone of cancer diagnosis and treatment. A pathologist carefully examines an ultrathin slice of human tissue under a microscope for clues that indicate the presence, type, and stage of cancer.

To a human expert, looking at a swirly pink tissue sample studded with purple cells is akin to grading an exam without a name on it — the slide reveals essential information about the disease without providing other details about the patient.

Yet the same isn’t necessarily true of pathology artificial intelligence models that have emerged in recent years. A new study led by a team at Harvard Medical School shows that these models can somehow infer demographic information from pathology slides, leading to bias in cancer diagnosis among different populations.

Analyzing several major pathology AI models designed to diagnose cancer, the researchers found unequal performance in detecting and differentiating cancers across populations based on patients’ self-reported gender, race, and age. They identified several possible explanations for this demographic bias.

The team then developed a framework called FAIR-Path that helped reduce bias in the models.

“Reading demographics from a pathology slide is thought of as a ‘mission impossible’ for a human pathologist, so the bias in pathology AI was a surprise to us,” said senior author Kun-Hsing Yu, associate professor of biomedical informatics in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS and HMS assistant professor of pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Identifying and counteracting AI bias in medicine is critical because it can affect diagnostic accuracy, as well as patient outcomes, Yu said. FAIR-Path’s success indicates that researchers can improve the fairness of AI models for cancer pathology, and perhaps other AI models in medicine, with minimal effort.

The work, which was supported in part by federal funding, is described Dec. 16 in Cell Reports Medicine.

Testing for bias

Yu and his team investigated bias in four standard AI pathology models being developed for cancer evaluation. These deep-learning models were trained on sets of annotated pathology slides, from which they “learned” biological patterns that enable them to analyze new slides and offer diagnoses.

The researchers fed the AI models a large, multi-institutional repository of pathology slides spanning 20 cancer types.

They discovered that all four models had biased performances, providing less accurate diagnoses for patients in specific groups based on self-reported race, gender, and age. For example, the models struggled to differentiate lung cancer subtypes in African American and male patients, and breast cancer subtypes in younger patients. The models also had trouble detecting breast, renal, thyroid, and stomach cancer in certain demographic groups. These performance disparities occurred in around 29 percent of the diagnostic tasks that the models conducted.

This diagnostic inaccuracy, Yu said, happens because these models extract demographic information from the slides — and rely on demographic-specific patterns to make a diagnosis.

The results were unexpected “because we would expect pathology evaluation to be objective,” Yu added. “When evaluating images, we don’t necessarily need to know a patient’s demographics to make a diagnosis.”

The team wondered: Why didn’t pathology AI show the same objectivity?

Searching for explanations

The researchers landed on three explanations.

Because it is easier to get samples for patients in certain demographic groups, the AI models are trained on unequal sample sizes. As a result, the models have a harder time making an accurate diagnosis in samples that aren’t well-represented in the training set, such as those from minority groups based on race, age, or gender.

Yet “the problem turned out to be much deeper than that,” Yu said. The researchers noticed that sometimes the models performed worse in one demographic group, even when the sample sizes were comparable.

Additional analyses revealed that this may be because of differential disease incidence: Some cancers are more common in certain groups, so the models become better at making a diagnosis in those groups. As a result, the models may have difficulty diagnosing cancers in populations where they aren’t as common.

The AI models also pick up on subtle molecular differences in samples from different demographic groups. For example, the models may detect mutations in cancer driver genes and use them as a proxy for cancer type — and thus be less effective at making a diagnosis in populations in which these mutations are less common.

“We found that because AI is so powerful, it can differentiate many obscure biological signals that cannot be detected by standard human evaluation,” Yu said.

As a result, the models may learn signals that are more related to demographics than disease. That, in turn, could affect their diagnostic ability across groups.

Together, Yu said, these explanations suggest that bias in pathology AI stems not only from the variable quality of the training data but also from how researchers train the models.

Finding a fix

After assessing the scope and sources of the bias, Yu and his team wanted to fix it.

The researchers developed FAIR-Path, a simple framework based on an existing machine-learning concept called contrastive learning. Contrastive learning involves adding an element to AI training that teaches the model to emphasize the differences between essential categories — in this case, cancer types — and to downplay the differences between less crucial categories — here, demographic groups.

When the researchers applied the FAIR-Path framework to the models they’d tested, it reduced the diagnostic disparities by around 88 percent.

“We show that by making this small adjustment, the models can learn robust features that make them more generalizable and fairer across different populations,” Yu said.

The finding is encouraging, he added, because it suggests that bias can be reduced even without training the models on completely fair, representative data.

Next, Yu and his team are collaborating with institutions around the world to investigate the extent of bias in pathology AI in places with different demographics and clinical and pathology practices. They are also exploring ways to extend FAIR-Path to settings with limited sample sizes. Additionally, they would like to investigate how bias in AI contributes to demographic discrepancies in health care and patient outcomes.

Ultimately, Yu said, the goal is to create fair, unbiased pathology AI models that can improve cancer care by helping human pathologists quickly and accurately make a diagnosis.

“I think there’s hope that if we are more aware of and careful about how we design AI systems, we can build models that perform well in every population,” he said.

Authorship, funding, disclosures

Additional authors on the study include Shih-Yen Lin, Pei-Chen Tsai, Fang-Yi Su, Chun-Yen Chen, Fuchen Li, Junhan Zhao, Yuk Yeung Ho, Tsung-Lu Michael Lee, Elizabeth Healey, Po-Jen Lin, Ting-Wan Kao, Dmytro Vremenko, Thomas Roetzer-Pejrimovsky, Lynette Sholl, Deborah Dillon, Nancy U. Lin, David Meredith, Keith L. Ligon, Ying-Chun Lo, Nipon Chaisuriya, David J. Cook, Adelheid Woehrer, Jeffrey Meyerhardt, Shuji Ogino, MacLean P. Nasrallah, Jeffrey A. Golden, Sabina Signoretti, and Jung-Hsien Chiang.

Funding was provided by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health (grants R35GM142879, R01HL174679), the Department of Defense (Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program Career Development Award HT9425-231-0523), the American Cancer Society (Research Scholar Grant RSG-24-1253761-01-ESED), a Google Research Scholar Award, a Harvard Medical School Dean’s Innovation Award, the National Science and Technology Council of Taiwan (grants NSTC 113-2917-I-006-009, 112-2634-F-006-003, 113-2321-B-006-023, 114-2917-I-006-016), and a doctoral student scholarship from the Xin Miao Education Foundation.

Ligon was a consultant of Travera, Bristol Myers Squibb, Servier, IntegraGen, L.E.K. Consulting, and Blaze Bioscience; received equity from Travera; and has research funding from Bristol Myers Squibb and Lilly. Vremenko is a cofounder and shareholder of Vectorly.

The authors prepared the initial manuscript and used ChatGPT to edit selected sections to improve readability. After using this tool, the authors reviewed and edited the content as needed and take full responsibility for the content of the published article.

---

Journal

Cell Reports Medicine

DOI

10.1016/j.xcrm.2025.102527 

Article Title

Contrastive Learning Enhances Fairness in Pathology Artificial Intelligence Systems

Article Publication Date

16-Dec-2025

 

Indoor tanning makes youthful skin much older on a genetic level

University of California - San Francisco

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

Tanning bed users are known to have a higher risk of skin cancer, but for the first time researchers have found that young indoor tanners undergo genetic changes that can lead to more mutations in their skin cells than people twice their age.  

The study, which was led by UC San Francisco and Northwestern University, appears Dec. 12 in Science Advances.  

“We found that tanning bed users in their 30s and 40s had even more mutations than people in the general population who were in their 70s and 80s,” said Bishal Tandukar, PhD, a UCSF postdoctoral scholar in Dermatology who is the co-first author of the study. “In other words, the skin of tanning bed users appeared decades older at the genetic level.” 

Such mutations can lead to skin cancer, which is the most common cancer in the U.S., according to the American Cancer Society. Among those skin cancers is melanoma, which accounts for only about 1% of skin cancers but causes most of the deaths. About 11,000 Americans die annually from melanoma, primarily from exposure to ultraviolet radiation.  

UV radiation occurs naturally in sunlight, as well as in artificial light sources like tanning beds. Rates of melanoma have risen along with the use of tanning beds in recent years, disproportionately affecting young women, who are the main clients of the tanning industry. 

Numerous countries effectively ban tanning beds, and the World Health Organization classifies them as a group 1 carcinogen, the same category as tobacco smoke and asbestos, but tanning beds remain legal and popular in the U.S.  

In their study, the authors looked at the medical records of more than 32,000 dermatology patients including their tanning bed usage, history of sunburn, and family history of melanoma. They also obtained skin samples from 26 donors and sequenced 182 cells. 

The young tanning bed users had more skin mutations than people twice their age, especially in their lower backs, an area that does not get much damage from sunlight but has a great deal of exposure from tanning beds.  

“The skin of tanning bed users was riddled with the seeds of cancer — cells with mutations known to lead to melanoma,” said senior author A. Hunter Shain, PhD, associate professor in the UCSF Department of Dermatology. 

“We cannot reverse a mutation once it occurs, so it is essential to limit how many mutations accumulate in the first place,” said Shain, whose laboratory focuses on the biology of skin cancer. “One of the simplest ways to do that is to avoid exposure to artificial UV radiation.” 

Authors: From UCSF, authors include Delahny Deivendran; Limin Chen, PhD; Jessica Tang, PhD; Tuyet Tan; Harsh Sharma, PhD; Aravind K. Bandari, PhD; Noel Cruz-Pacheco, MS; Darwin Chang; Annika L. Marty, MS; Adam Olshen, PhD; Natalia Faraj Murad, PhD; and Iwei Yeh, MD, PhD. Co-first author Pedram Gerami, MD, is with Northwestern University, Chicago. 

Funding: The study was supported by the National Cancer Institute (R01 CA265786); the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (AR080626); the Department of Defense Melanoma Research Program (ME210014); and the Melanoma Research Alliance. Please see the paper for additionalfunders.  

Disclosures: None reported.  

 

About UCSF: The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area. UCSF School of Medicine also has a regional campus in Fresno. Learn more at https://ucsf.edu or see our Fact Sheet.

 

###

Follow UCSF

ucsf.edu | Facebook.com/ucsf | Twitter.com/ucsf | YouTube.com/ucsf

---

Journal

Science Advances

Tanning beds triple melanoma risk, potentially causing broad DNA damage

Study is first to show how tanning beds mutate skin cells far beyond the reach of ordinary sunlight

Northwestern University

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Dr. Pedram Gerami examines the skin of patient and melanoma survivor Heidi Tarr

view more 

Credit: Ben Schamisso / Northwestern University

• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• Study analyzed thousands of medical records to compare melanoma rates in tanning bed users vs. non-users, and sequenced 182 skin biopsies from tanning bed users and controls
• Tanning bed users carried double the mutation burden of controls
• In users, mutations appeared even in body areas that don’t get much sun exposure

CHICAGO ---Tanning bed use is tied to almost a threefold increase in melanoma risk, and for the first time, scientists have shown how these devices cause melanoma-linked DNA damage across nearly the entire skin surface, reports a new study led by Northwestern Medicine and University of California, San Francisco.

Melanoma, the deadliest skin cancer, kills about 11,000 in the U.S. each year. Despite decades of warnings, the precise biological mechanism behind tanning beds’ cancer risk remained unclear. The indoor tanning industry, which is making a comeback, has used that uncertainty to argue that tanning beds are no more harmful than sunlight.

This new study “irrefutably” challenges those claims by showing how tanning beds, at a molecular level, mutate skin cells far beyond the reach of ordinary sunlight, according to the authors.

“Even in normal skin from indoor tanning patients, areas where there are no moles, we found DNA changes that are precursor mutations that predispose to melanoma,” said study first author Dr. Pedram Gerami, professor of skin cancer research at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “That has never been shown before.”

Melanoma survivors with histories of tanning bed use, who donated their biopsies for this study, are available for interviews upon request.

The findings will publish Dec. 12 in Science Advances.

A clinical mystery

Gerami, who also directs the melanoma program in dermatology at Northwestern, has been treating melanoma patients for 20 years. Over the years, he noticed an unusually high number of women under 50 with a history of multiple melanomas, and suspected the linking factor was tanning bed usage. So, along with his research team, he designed the epidemiologic part of the study and compared the medical records of roughly 3,000 tanning bed users with 3,000 age-matched controls with no history of indoor tanning.

The team found that melanoma was diagnosed in 5.1% of tanning bed users compared with 2.1% of non-users. After adjusting for age, sex, sunburn history and family history, tanning bed use remained associated with a 2.85-fold increase in melanoma risk.

Tanning bed users were also more likely to develop melanoma on sun-shielded body sites, such as the lower back and buttocks. These findings supported the idea that tanning beds may cause broader DNA injury than sun exposure.

DNA sequencing

To test that hypothesis, the scientists used new genomic technologies to perform single-cell DNA sequencing on melanocytes (the pigment-producing skin cells where melanoma begins) from three skin donor groups.

The first group included 11 patients from Gerami with long histories of indoor tanning. The second group consisted of nine patients who had never used tanning beds but were otherwise matched for age, sex and cancer risk profiles. A third group of six cadaver donors supplied additional skin tissue to round out the control samples.

The scientists sequenced 182 individual melanocytes and found skin cells from tanning bed users carried nearly twice as many mutations as those from controls and were more likely to contain melanoma-linked mutations. In indoor tanners, the mutations also appeared in body areas that typically remain protected from the sun, confirming that tanning beds create a broader field of DNA injury.

“In outdoor sun exposure, maybe 20% of your skin gets the most damage,” Gerami said. “In tanning bed users, we saw those same dangerous mutations across almost the entire skin surface.”

Cancer survivor donates skin biopsy

The study would not have been possible without the generosity of Gerami’s patients who donated their biopsies. One of them, 49-year-old Heidi Tarr from the Chicago area, used tanning beds heavily during high school — two to three sessions a week — because friends and celebrities at the time were also doing it and “it felt like that's what made you beautiful.”

Decades later, as a mother in her thirties, she noticed a mole on her back and immediately feared the worst. Her melanoma diagnosis led to surgery, years of frequent follow-up visits and more than 15 additional biopsies as new moles appeared. “The biopsies can be painful, but the mental anxiety is worse,” she said. “You’re always waiting for the call that it’s melanoma again.”

When Gerami explained the study, she volunteered more biopsies without hesitation. “I value science, and I wanted to help,” she said. “If what happened to my skin can help others understand the real risks of tanning beds, then it matters.”

‘Wronged by the industry’

After seeing the biological and clinical evidence side by side, Gerami said the need for policy change is clear. “At the very least, indoor tanning should be illegal for minors,” he said.

“Most of my patients started tanning when they were young, vulnerable and didn’t have the same level of knowledge and education they have as adults,” he said. “They feel wronged by the industry and regret the mistakes of their youth.”

Gerami also said tanning beds should carry warnings similar to those on cigarettes. “When you buy a pack of cigarettes, it says this may result in lung cancer,” he said. “We should have a similar campaign with tanning bed usage. The World Health Organization has deemed tanning beds to be the same level of carcinogen as smoking and asbestos. It’s a class one carcinogen.”

Gerami suggests that anyone who frequently tanned earlier in life should have a total-body skin exam by a dermatologist and be evaluated for whether they need routine skin checks.

Gerami is a member of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University.

The study, titled “Molecular effects of indoor tanning,” was funded by the National Institutes of Health (grants R01 CA265786 and AR080626), the Department of Defense Melanoma Research Program (grant ME210014), the Melanoma Research Alliance Team Science Award, the Melanoma Research Alliance Dermatology Fellows Award, the LEO Foundation Region Americas Award, Cancer Center Support (grant P30CA082103), the IDP Foundation Award and the Greg and Anna Brown Family Foundation Award.

---

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.ady4878 

Article Title

Molecular effects of indoor tanning

Article Publication Date

12-Dec-2025

Dr. Pedram Gerami examines the skin of patient and melanoma survivor Heidi Tarr

Dr. Pedram Gerami in Northwestern's dermapathology lab

Caption

Dr. Pedram Gerami looking at a skin biopsy in his office

Credit

Ben Schamisso / Northwestern University

Dr. Pedram Gerami walking in Northwestern's dermapathology lab [VIDEO] 

B-roll of Dr. Pedram Gerami walking in Northwestern's dermapathology la

Dr. Pedram Gerami examines the skin of patient and melanoma survivor Heidi Tarr [VIDEO] 

B-roll of Dr. Pedram Gerami examining the skin of patient and melanoma survivor Heidi Tarr

Credit

Northwestern University