Talk:Sunburn

	Medicine portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine, which recommends that medicine-related articles follow the Manual of Style for medicine-related articles and that biomedical information in any article use high-quality medical sources. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine.MedicineWikipedia:WikiProject MedicineTemplate:WikiProject Medicinemedicine
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by the Dermatology task force.

Ideal sources for Wikipedia's health content are defined in the guideline Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) and are typically review articles. Here are links to possibly useful sources of information about Sunburn.

PubMed provides review articles from the past five years (limit to free review articles)
The TRIP database provides clinical publications about evidence-based medicine.
Other potential sources include: Centre for Reviews and Dissemination and CDC

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Af987. Peer reviewers: Grisreyes.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 10:26, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Citations

The section regarding "increased risk" lacks citations. In particular, the short paragraph regarding ozone depletion's correlation with increased sunburn needs a primary source. Scientific (and particularly medical) claims need to be substantiated by journals.

Sunburn as a cause of cancer

This is rather misleading. Sunburns are not a cause of cancer, but rather a reaction to the DNA damage that causes cancer. Which is why the two usually accompany each other. I know of a friend who, because of an odd pairing of parents (Mexican and Irish), does not get sunburns but has light-colored skin. This doesn't mean that the skin cells aren't getting DNA damage from the UV rays. In fact, it's probably a greater risk for skin cancer than not getting sunburns at all.

See http://health.howstuffworks.com/sunscreen3.htm --Clarphimous

Range of skin damage

Can the range which certain people may be tolerant of exposure to the sun be discussed. For example, my skin is a relatively tanned color permanently, when i went on vacation in the Carribean i was burned for the first day because my skin wasn't used to the intensity of the sun but after that, my skin got progressively darker and i wasn't burnt again for the duration of the trip.

Heritability

Are there any studies estimating the heritability of sunburn? (this working independently of someone's level of tanning, or level of melanin in general)

Absent mentions of "Hell's Itch" / "Suicide Itch"

I'm surprised there doesn't seem to be mention of this particular nerve reaction to sunburns within this article, or see it referenced through searches to any other article. Information on this condition ought to be added in further detail, with redirects for both terms. Aurelinius (talk) 15:00, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]