Essay On How Does The Sun Harm Us

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How Does the Sun Harm Us?

The sun helps us in many ways from keeping our planet warm, giving us necessary vitamins and most importantly it causes photosynthesis in plants so they can give us oxygen but how does the sun harm us? The sun releases ultraviolet light photons that when come in contact with skin can cause painful sunburns in the short term and lead to life-threatening skin cancer in older age. However, sunburns and skin cancer can be prevented by following a few simple rules.

The sun, as it shines down upon us it gives us vitamin D that is needed for normal bone formation but it in those warm rays there is ultraviolet light (UV-B and UV-A to be specific) that can not be seen by the human eye but are the reason behind sunburns. …show more content…

Melanin is a pigment in our skin that causes us to tan, it is produced by skin cells called melanocytes, when the UV-B particles hit skin they are absorbed by melanin and felt as heat in our bodies on the outer layers of skin. Deeper inside the skin UV-A light is felt and produces free radicals that can then cause premature aging and immunological complications. After prolonged exposure to the sun, the melanin in a person’s body can no longer counteract the harmful light and begins to burn. Sunburns occur as molecules, cells and DNA are killed BY UV-B light when the skin is damaged it tells itself to heal by creating proteins and enzymes. These proteins mainly prostaglandins and cytokines cause the blood vessels to enlarge, and inflammatory cells to come and help the affected area. This rapid production of healing cells creates the red, swollen area of a typical sunburn. These proteins take around four to six hours to be created, this is why sunburns generally appear a few hours after exposure instead to the sun in lieu of during. When a person has been exposed to too much harmful radiation in a day extremely bad sunburns can occur that create tissue damage, when these severe burns occur blisters form over the

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