As more and more people develop malignant melanoma from using sunbeds, we have to ask ourselves why these people are yet to recognise the dangers of topping up their tans and why salon owners are able to provide such a service, which can sometimes be totally unsupervised.

Like many things that we look back on, in 50 years time we may question why sunbeds were ever in existence for customers and who knows, we may even see a number of no win, no fee compensation claims being made.

One of my favourite programmes on television at the moment has got to be Channel Four's Ten Years Younger (www.channel4.com). I'm always stunned to see how people manage to let there looks deteriorate over the years to the point that people on the street think they look about 65 when their real age is in fact 51.

But none have shocked me as much as the latest episode where a woman who for her entire adult lifetime had been tanning herself in the garden and under the sunbed using butter and even engine oil to deepen her colour! If the woman's skin cells could talk, I'm sure that they would want to speak to a personal injury solicitor to make an injury compensation claim against her for exposing them to such extreme levels of UV light.

Like most of my friends who refuse to accept that each time they use a sunbed their skin becomes a little more leathery, the woman ignored all of the warning signs and carried on attending her beauty salon three times a week. After all, if tanning booths are legally allowed to be used on our high street, surely they can't be that dangerous?

And what about how they make you feel? According to the show's plastic surgeon, people become addicted to tanning booths because when their skin has been exposed to UV rays it tends to swell up slightly, reducing fine lines and giving the person an overall healthier look. Surely that can't be a bad thing?

But no matter how good you might feel or think you might look, the possibility of developing cancer is a real risk, a risk that could be prevented if better regulations and warnings were imposed.

If somebody wanted to make a no win, no fee claim for injury compensation, they would have to be able to prove that the sunbed they were using was faulty or that a tanning salon was not fully supervised or failed to provide warnings about tanning for long periods of time.

Last year, such an accident claim was made against a sunbed hire company after a woman was knocked out by an electric shock, which then caused the lid of a sunbed to collapse on top of her. The woman remained lying under the UV rays, unconscious, for two hours and 40 minutes before she slowly came around and prised the lid off. She suffered severe burn injuries in the accident and may have considered contacting compensation solicitors to make a no win, no fee claim for accident compensation.

If you are considering using a tanning booth consult a health and beauty specialist who will be able to advise you on the length of time and regularity for which you should be using a sunbed.

But why use a tanning bed? What's so bad with being the English Rose you were born as? Unless the opportunity to make no win, no fee claims for injury compensation was available, many of us would find it very difficult to get our lives back on track after sustaining serious personal injury or afford the same amount of surgery the woman on Ten Years Younger needed to repair her damaged face.

This article may be published on another website free of charge, on the condition that a link is provided from this article to our website: http://www.youclaim.co.uk/Personal-injury/Personal-injury.htm