I’m worried about damaged skin. If I have a patch of surface where the keratin layer is abnormally thin, does that skin mutate, metastasize, and threaten my entire body? I suspect such patches are present in over 1% of individuals under normal circumstances.
Burns, sunburns, repeated impact, scrapes, abrasion from overuse...
I generally only put a dressing on damaged skin if it’s actually bleeding. And even then if the dressing falls off after it clots, I don’t worry about it.
I don’t think this would be a problem with sunburn unless your skin started peeling.
I generally only put a dressing on damaged skin if it’s actually bleeding.
One should probably put a dressing on that in public places for general hygiene reasons anyway—both for your benefit and for the benefit of other people!
The total time x surface area of these events is probably not very large anyway, and in addition your cells are less affected due to their size, might be hidden under clothes, in shadow, etc etc etc. One would have to run the numbers on this and compare it to existing skin cancers from UVB—it could very plausibly be 3 orders of magnitude less.
abrasion from overuse
What’s the time x surface area for people rubbing their own skin off? Probably not much!
I’m worried about damaged skin. If I have a patch of surface where the keratin layer is abnormally thin, does that skin mutate, metastasize, and threaten my entire body? I suspect such patches are present in over 1% of individuals under normal circumstances.
Can you give an example of what could cause that?
We usually cover damaged skin with a dressing because it can be harmed by other threats, so I’m struggling to think of something.
Burns, sunburns, repeated impact, scrapes, abrasion from overuse...
I generally only put a dressing on damaged skin if it’s actually bleeding. And even then if the dressing falls off after it clots, I don’t worry about it.
I don’t think this would be a problem with sunburn unless your skin started peeling.
One should probably put a dressing on that in public places for general hygiene reasons anyway—both for your benefit and for the benefit of other people!
The total time x surface area of these events is probably not very large anyway, and in addition your cells are less affected due to their size, might be hidden under clothes, in shadow, etc etc etc. One would have to run the numbers on this and compare it to existing skin cancers from UVB—it could very plausibly be 3 orders of magnitude less.
What’s the time x surface area for people rubbing their own skin off? Probably not much!
This is exactly the sort of concern that needs to be more rigorously addressed before a solution like widespread far-UVC is implemented.