4/16/2023 Washington Post: “It may be hard to believe, but a sunburn you got in your teens could be responsible for the skin cancer you develop in your 50s. Each time you burn, you elevate your risk.”
In: 9
I’m not going to pretend to fully understand medical issues, but I’ll talk to you a bit about this from the physics side.
Cancer is caused when the instructions (DNA) for a cell get screwed up and it starts copying itself wrong. The rays from the sun rip through the cells instructions and mess them all up.
More detailed explanation: the suns rays are partly made of UV light which is *ionizing radiation* (ionizing radiation includes UV, X-ray and gamma radiation). As the light ray hits a DNA molecule, it will cause some of the atoms in it to ionize which means they don’t want to hold hands anymore and the molecule will rearrange.
When the DNA gets copied, it copies over this mistake and the instructions can cause the cell to go out of control and keep copying itself.
Latest Answers