I assume Radiation burns would do the same type of damage, but how does that damage increase the chances for skin cancer if other sources do not?
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while called a burn, sunburns and radiation burns are a bit different. rather than combustion or simply destruction of a cell due to intense heat that cooks it, sunburns are when high energy particles such as UV light penetrate the skin cells. Eventually those particles hit something they cannot penetrate, and when they do, they offload the energy they were carrying, usually into the innards of the cell, such as your DNA, damaging it. Once damaged enough the cell triggers its self-destruct safeguard and dies. Sunburns are the result of a large amount of healthy cells dying from being too badly damaged.
The damage to DNA is also why there is an increased cancer risk. The body has several safeguards in place to prevent the rise of malfunctioning cells. Cells go through rigorous checks before they divide to make sure they DNA was copied properly, they self destruct if they get too badly damaged, and your immune system usually cleans out the defective cells when the first two safeguards fail. Cancer is when all three of those safeguards fail and the cell is replicating out of control because of its damaged DNA no longer telling it to wait. The more often the DNA of your cells are damaged, such as when sunburn, the higher likelihood of a case where all three safeguards fail and the cell begins to multiply unchecked. Burns from heat usually damage the entire cell, so even if the DNA might have been damaged the cell doesn’t survive anyways.
Chemical Burns are different from both radiation and heat burns. While it feels like a burn in many cases, chemical burns are a result of corrosive or reactive chemicals reacting with and destroying your skin cells through chemical reactions rather than heat or radiation. Depending on the chemical involved an increased risk of cancer can be present or not.
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