Are sunbeds and tanning injections safe during pregnancy?

The verdict

No, to both, and for different reasons.

Sunbeds are not recommended for anyone at any time. The ultraviolet radiation they emit is classified by the World Health Organization as a human carcinogen, using one before the age of 35 raises melanoma risk by around 75%, and Australia has banned commercial sunbeds outright. Pregnancy adds two problems on top of that: melasma, which UV reliably makes worse, and a folate question that has never been fully settled.

Tanning injections are worse. Melanotan is not licensed as a medicine anywhere and is not a legal cosmetic. It is illegal to sell in the UK, it has no safety data in pregnancy at all, and it is injected - typically with equipment and product of unknown provenance.

Fake tan from a bottle or a spray booth is the alternative, and it is the one that every authority actively recommends.

Why UV is a different question in pregnancy

The cancer argument is the same as it is for everyone. Sunbeds deliver a concentrated dose of UVA and UVB, both listed as carcinogens by the WHO. ARPANSA cites an Australian estimate that, before the bans, tanning bed UV contributed to 43 melanoma deaths and 2,572 new squamous cell carcinomas a year in Australia alone.

Three things are specific to being pregnant:

• Melasma. Pregnancy raises oestrogen and MSH, melanocytes become hyperactive, and UV is the trigger that converts that into visible pigmentation - the mask of pregnancy, across the cheeks, forehead and upper lip. It affects a large minority of pregnancies, it is often slow to fade after birth, and concentrated UV is the single most effective way to bring it on. This is the most certain harm on the page: not a probability, a mechanism.
• Folate. Folate is photolabile - UVA degrades it in solution, and some human studies have found lower serum folate after UV exposure. Folate deficiency in the first trimester is the one nutritional factor with an established causal link to neural tube defects, which is why supplementation before conception exists at all. The evidence that sunbed use meaningfully depletes folate stores in a supplemented person is suggestive rather than proven, and no authority has issued guidance on it. But it is a biologically coherent reason to be cautious in the first trimester specifically.
• Heat and fainting. A sunbed session is a warm, enclosed, lying-down exposure at a time when your blood pressure is lower and your heat tolerance is reduced. Overheating and fainting are the immediate risks, and they are more likely than they were before pregnancy.

What sunbeds do not do is deliver useful vitamin D. Most sunbeds emit predominantly UVA, which does not drive vitamin D synthesis. UK guidance is to take a daily 10 microgram vitamin D supplement in pregnancy, which is the intended route.

Tanning injections

Melanotan I and II are synthetic analogues of alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone, injected or taken as nasal spray to darken skin without sun exposure. They are sold as though they were cosmetics. They are not.

No melanotan product has been approved for use in the UK, and the MHRA has spent years shutting down websites supplying them. They are unlicensed, illegally sold products, so nothing about their identity, purity or dose is verified. Reported adverse effects include gastrointestinal and cardiovascular problems and blood and eye disorders, and there are documented cases of moles changing during use - which matters because melanoma is one of the few cancers that metastasises to the placenta.

There is no pregnancy data at all. Not reassuring data, not concerning data - none. Combine that with self-injection using unverified product and the answer is not close.

If you have already used a sunbed or a tanning injection

A sunbed session before you knew you were pregnant is not an exposure that anyone tests, monitors or treats. There is no scan, no blood test and no intervention that follows from it. The realistic consequences are pigmentation and skin damage, both of which are yours rather than your baby's.

Two things are worth doing. First, make sure you are taking 400 micrograms of folic acid daily through the first 12 weeks, which you should be doing anyway and which is the direct answer to the folate concern. Second, keep an eye on your moles: report any that change size, shape or colour, that itch or bleed, or that look different from your others, to your GP. Pregnancy does cause benign darkening of existing moles, so getting a professional look rather than self-diagnosing is the right move.

If you have used melanotan and are pregnant, stop and tell your midwife or GP. Not because there is a treatment, but because it belongs in your notes and because mole surveillance genuinely matters afterwards.

Where the guidance differs by country

On what you should do, nowhere. Every authority says the same thing: do not use a sunbed. What differs is whether the machine is legal at all.

Australia has banned them. Commercial solaria were prohibited across all states and territories by 2016 - Victoria first, on 1 January 2015. ARPANSA notes the ban applies only to commercial operations, so private ownership remains possible, and that there have been prosecutions of people running illegal tanning businesses from private property, with fines from AU$13,000 to AU$52,000 and dozens of units seized.

The UK restricts by age, and is reviewing that. The Sunbeds (Regulation) Act 2010 makes it illegal for under-18s to use sunbeds in tanning salons, beauty salons, leisure centres, gyms and hotels. Adults may use them. The Department of Health and Social Care has consulted on strengthening the regulation of commercial sunbeds in England, with the consultation document noting that Schedule 1 already provides specific advice to pregnant women about the risk of burning, since some find their skin is more sensitive during pregnancy.

The US warns but does not ban. Sunlamp products are regulated by the FDA under a performance standard at 21 CFR 1040.20, which mandates warning labels including a black-box statement that the product should not be used on persons under 18. There is no federal ban; state law does the restricting, and it varies. An FDA proposal to formally restrict use by minors was published in 2015 and never finalised.

On melanotan, everyone agrees and nobody has approved it. It is not licensed as a medicine in the UK, EU, US, Canada or Australia, and it is not a permitted cosmetic ingredient in any of them. Selling it is illegal in the UK. That unanimity is worth noting: an unregulated injectable is the rare product on which regulators with very different philosophies have reached identical conclusions.

The recommended alternative is also unanimous. Fake tan from a bottle or a spray tan is safer than using a sunbed or sunbathing - which is the NHS position, the Cancer Research UK position, and the position of every cancer authority that publishes on it.