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Asked by jannynishy11 to Asif, Laura, Lena, Sean on 20 Mar 2012.
Question: Why do some people get sunburnt and some don't?
- Keywords:
- human body,
- skin,
- sun,
- sunburn
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Lena Ciric answered on 20 Mar 2012:
It’s to do with the amount of melanin in your skin. Melanin is a type of pigment that’s found in most organisms. The more you have the more sun you can take before you burn. The darker skins have more melanin.
- Keywords:
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Sean Murphy answered on 20 Mar 2012:
It is because pale-skinned people have lower amounts of a pigment called melanin in their skin. This is a brown pigment that is very useful when it comes to the skin’s protection against the sun’s harmful rays. Dark-skinned people do have greater amounts of melanin in their skin compared to the pale-skinned people; hence, they have more protection, and have lesser chances of experiencing sunburn.
Comments
superpiman commented on :
Which is also why people with freckles tend to ‘burn’ less
laylazecheeky commented on :
superpiman, not neccecrily because I have a friend that has lots of freckles and she still burns really easily. She is fairly pale but still gets sunburn with the slightest bit of sun. This has made her slightly vampire like because she refuses to go outside in the sun…