Sunbathing 'can blind you'

Sunbathers are risking not only their skins but also their sight in pursuit of a tan, experts claim.

Eye specialists have discovered that too much time in the sun can trigger age-related maculopathy, the biggest cause of vision loss in older people.

The disease, which affects about 500,000 Britons, reduces sharpness of vision and colour perception and symptoms occur decades after the damage is done. But sun worshippers can more than halve the risk by wearing sunglasses and hats.

Ophthalmologist Dr Ronald Klein, whose team at the University of Wisconsin studied 3,684 people over ten years, said: 'The problem is that there's no way of knowing who is at risk until signs of the disease appear.'