[https://www.cancer.org/healthy/be-safe-in-sun/uv-protection.html](https://www.cancer.org/healthy/be-safe-in-sun/uv-protection.html)
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Heat /=/ UV is the simplest way to explain it.
Meaning, dark clothing absorbs more heat, but reflects more UV. Lighter clothing absorbs less heat but lets in more UV.
The heat itself wouldn’t cause UV rays, as to why we don’t worry about UV’s from furances.
Heat isn’t what causes cancer. It’s the high-powered UV rays.
If you want to protect yourself from UV rays, it makes sense to have a material that can absorb them before they get to you. Dark colored clothing absorbs more UV rays, which necessarily means less rays are hitting your skin.
Well, on an ELI5 level, UV radiation absorbed by the clothing isn’t being absorbed by the skin.
On an ELI10 level, a lot of the time the coloring used to create black tends to be less transparent at UV wavelengths than the whites, iirc, so white clothes simply interfere less with passage of UV.
UV radiation is dangerous because it is able to penetrate into your skin and cause damage to your cells, causing cancer, and breaking down the structure of your skin.
Dark colored clothing absorbs the UV better, so less of it gets to your skin.
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