Beauty help: Medical Question: I heard UV radiation is non-ionizing. - Help.com

Medical Question: I heard UV radiation is non-ionizing.

How is it able to do damage to the DNA of your skin if it is non-ionizing? I heard with other non ionizing radiation (RF and microwaves) that the main danger is the waves damage tissue through heating at extremely high concentrations.

I’m pretty sure UV does not heat the tissue, so how is it that it manages to alter or break DNA without ionizing the molecules?

This open post was written 4 months, 1 week ago | V/U/S: 290, 2, 2 | Edit Post | Leave a reply | Report Post

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Since writing this post betta may have helped people, but has not within the last 4 days. betta is a verified member, has been around for 1 year, 8 months and has 28 posts and 1,686 replies to their name.

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DNA, Medicine, Ionizing radiation, heat, Skin, Risk, Concentration, Wave, Beauty, molecule, radiation, physics, medical (How Tags Affect Reciprocity)

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jimtc offline Verified User (4 months, 1 week) Long Term User Shouts: 2 #
An Unknown Location | 4 months ago (1 day, 4 hours after post)

” far ultraviolet light (UVC) can ionize many atoms and molecules; near ultraviolet (UVA/UVB) and visible light are ionizing to very few molecules “

” UVB light can cause direct DNA damage. The radiation excites DNA molecules in skin cells, causing aberrant covalent bonds to form between adjacent cytosine bases, producing a dimer. When DNA polymerase comes along to replicate this strand of DNA, it reads the dimer as “AA” and not the original “CC”. This causes the DNA replication mechanism to add a “TT” on the growing strand. This is a mutation, which can result in cancerous growths…”

” UVA does not damage DNA directly like UVB and UVC, but it can generate highly reactive chemical intermediates, such as hydroxyl and oxygen radicals, which in turn can damage DNA. “

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultravio…

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betta offline Verified User (1 year, 8 months) Long Term User Shouts: 2 #
Toronto, ON, CA | 4 months ago (4 days, 2 hours after post)

Thanks a lot Jim. I got to go away from the computer again now, but I’ll check out those links really soon.

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