Cancer registries established after World War II show that in most light‐skinned populations, the incidence of malignant cutaneous melanoma (hereafter termed melanoma) has steadily increased. In the 1970s and 1980s, laboratory and epidemiological studies documented the possibility that solar radiation was the main environmental risk factor for most skin cancers, including melanoma, the basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and the squamous cell carcinoma (SCC).