Two people under 35 are diagnosed with skin cancer across Sussex every seven days.
Experts, who have warned people to cover up as the county warms up this week, said skin cancer cases have doubled in the last decade.
Medics say it is difficult to pinpoint the reason for the increase but believe it is a combination of sunbed use, too much exposure to sun as a child and failure to take the right precautions.
Bav Shergill, a consultant dermatologist based at Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, said: "In the last month alone I have seen three younger women diagnosed with cancer and that is very worrying.
"The number of younger people coming to us is becoming increasingly noticeable.
"It used to be mainly older people who were diagnosed because they had spent a lifetime of exposure to the sun.
"But now there is a concerning number of younger patients coming in.
This may be a bit of a stretch, but I come across this older news item about 1000 ex-sevice men in Sussex winning a legal battle for compensation against the MOD. The compensation was awarded for the atomic radiation they were exposed to in the Nuclear testing carried out in the 1957 in the South Pacific and mainland Australia. What I found interesting was the comment about the chromosomal aberrations and skin cancer the veterans suffered from. So I wondered if any of these younger folks could in fact be offspring of those 1000 ex-service men, and hence the chromosonal abnormalities would have been passed ot a younger generation, and hence making them more suseptible to increased skin cancer risks? A bit of a leap I know, but it may explain a lot if a link is found.
"Since developing skin cancer in 1975, the nuclear test veteran has had more than 200 carcinomas removed from his skin, and believes his condition is a direct result of the radiation he and his colleagues were exposed to during the test. "
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