Reports last week confirmed what the non-thick portion of the population already knew: sunbeds are bad for you. UV radiation used to be classified as 'probably' cancer-causing, but after blasting mice with the stuff in labs and seeing strange mutations occur, it now makes sense to classify it as a fully loaded carcinogenic. The research was published online on Wednesday in the medical journal Lancet Oncology, and compiled by cancer clever clogs at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, part of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Anyone who takes to a sunbed is out of their minds. There are plenty of more socially acceptable ways of contracting cancer: smoking, using mustard gas as cologne, injecting oneself with E numbers - anything, really. But for some reason a large part of the public still think lying down on top of cancer-pumping bulbs just so you can increase your chance of scoring that weekend by approx 3% is a good idea, or at least a tolerable idea.

The WHO's warning that sunbeds cause cancer is hardly shocking - kind of akin to someone releasing a statement saying "eating tomatoes may cause the taste of tomatoes to manifest in your mouth", or "voting for Fianna Fáil may involve mild to never-ending dissatisfaction" - but the figures they've come up with are pretty astounding. In Ireland, there has been a 75% increase in the number of women under 50 being diagnosed with malignant melanoma in the past 10 years. The WHO found that the risk of developing skin cancer jumps 75% when people start using tanning beds before they reach the age of 30. In Britain, where Cheryl Cole running around half-nudie and showing off her tan subliminally forces everyone to head to the nearest tanning booth while singing 'The Promise' and getting married to people like Ashley Cole, melanoma is the leading cancer diagnosed among women in their 20s. Here, over 8,000 people are diagnosed with skin cancer annually.

Then there's a little something called 'arc eye'. Arc eye is something welders get, or people lost in blizzards from snow blindness, or people using improper eye protection on sunbeds. It's basically keratitis, a condition that inflames the cornea and can create scarring leading to impaired vision. So if you and your mates are tanning and get gammy welder's eye, then you won't even be able to check out each other's bronzed physiques.

The news that sunbeds DEFINITELY cause cancer is probably indicator #1,895 that The Party's Over. There is, in my opinion, a direct correlation between the economic health of a nation and the orangeness of its citizens' skin. Let's call it the Oompa Loompa Index for simplicity. The Oompa Loompa Index (OLI) tracks bronzing trends in line with consumerism. Interestingly, the OLI indicates that citizens are at their most orange during the initial emergence of a prosperous economy - not necessarily at its "boomier" time, as a former taoiseach might have put it. It is when someone is trying to show they have more money than they do, as opposed to just being rich. And that explains the rash of orangeness that enveloped Ireland's nightclubs, social pages and salons during the late '90s and early '00s. Come the mid-'00s, when everyone had their lot and were busy buying up estates in Monrovia, the tans calmed down.

This was possibly due to the realisation that a tan should be 'healthy' not 'showy' - with irony lost on the fact that creating that 'healthy' glow meant subjecting oneself to a carcinogenic. Punters wanted a more natural, sophisticated look; a little more 'I've just been surfing at Big Sur' and a little less 'I just overdosed on Sunny Delight'. And now the good days are gone, the OLI has dipped somewhat. Ban the tan, and the surface (and skin) of the Celtic Cub image comes peeling off.

Also presumably out the door, once Mary Harney gets around to banning sunbeds for under-18s ,will be the unholy partnership of the sunbed and video shop.

At the top of my – now sadly defunct - Top Five Mysteries of the Celtic Tiger chart (which also featured the 'logic' behind Sunday Independent Life magazine covers, the existence of Eurocycle and Eurobaby, people going to Dubai, and Ugg boots with tracksuit bottoms) was sunbeds in video shops. This merger was never explained, it just happened overnight, popping up like an off-colour mole. Do you really trust someone who spends most of their day getting stoned and watching The Big Lebowski on loop to look after your mesodermal tissues?

I don't think we'll be particularly nostalgic when these burning cancer machines are shuffled off to the scrapheap, and they will most likely be filed under the 'what were we thinking' category - like Guinness Light, DeLoreans and Fáilte Towers. Although, at least those three didn't kill us.