A full head of hair provides very little protection for your scalp from harmful UV rays, says a new study published in the journal Photochemistry and Photobiology.
The study's researchers claim that a large number of melanomas occur on the scalp, with one study showing they make up 13 percent of melanomas.
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To reach the conclusion, the research team studied how much ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun got through to the scalp with a full head of hair.
They placed a UV sensor in the centre of the top of the head of a mannequin adorned with a wig made of human hair. The researchers then tested how much UV got through when the sun was at different positions in the sky.
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They also tested what happened when the head was upright or tilted towards the sun, and what happened under the shade of a beach umbrella.
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They found that the colour of the hair made no difference, but that short hair may provide marginally more protection than long hair.
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Overall, the researchers found hair offered a protection factor ranging from 5 to 17, which is significantly lower that the average sunscreen, which offers a protection factor of 30.
"This is much lower than properly applied sunscreen. I'm surprised that the protection factor is so low," says Parisi.
Source-ANI
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