Evolution of Human Skin Colour Essay Example for Free

Evolution of Human Skin Colour Essay Skin cancer can be caused by many things; the first is getting too much exposure to sun. The UV rays come in contact with your skin and reaction occurs which makes your skin tan or burn. The UV rays from just one sunburn can damage your skin and cause you to become more at risk of getting skin cancer. Another cause of skin cancer could be genetics, if your someone in your family had skin cancer the mutated gene could possibly get passed down to you and you could have a higher risk of developing skin cancer. One last cause of skin cancer is if someone has a lot of moles. If there are many moles some could be abnormal which means it is more likely that one mole could be or could turn cancerous. 2. Caucasians are more at risk of skin cancer than other populations because Caucasians have fair skin. Fair skinned people don’t have much pigment/melanin in their skin which means they’re less protected by the suns UV radiation. Other populations such as African-Americans would be less at risk of getting skin cancer because they have lots of melanin in their skin to block the UV rays. 3. A lifetime of sun exposure will obviously increase a person’s chances in developing skin cancer so as you get older the risk increases. Most diagnoses are made when people are over the age of 50 but if someone is highly exposed to the sun frequently the cancer could occur earlier than 50. The incidence of skin cancer is greater in old age because someone who is older would have accumulated all the sun exposure over the years and someone who is younger would not have been exposed to as much sun which lowers their chances of developing skin cancer at their age.