if our skin cells are constantly dying and being replaced by new ones, how can a bad sunburn turn into cancer YEARS down the line?

Question

if our skin cells are constantly dying and being replaced by new ones, how can a bad sunburn turn into cancer YEARS down the line?

In: 3306

Answer 1

Skin has layers. The outer layers are the ones known for constantly dying and being replaced, but there’s a layer beneath that which is what feeds most of the replacing.
Most of the really bad damage with sunburns only gets those outermost layers, but a really bad one can get the really bad damage all the way down to the layer which does the replacing. That damage is what leads to cancer years later as those cells do their normal replacement among each other