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Does exercising while in sunlight affect the rate at which the human body absorbs and reacts to UV rays? As sunburn is the secretion of fluids, increased dilation of blood vessels and inflammation of skin would exercising (as it also increases blood vessel dilation for heat loss) accelerate the "sun-burn" process in skin?

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  • $\begingroup$ reacts? probably. absorbs UV? no. $\endgroup$
    – Eubie Drew
    Oct 18, 2015 at 4:20

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The only pathways in which I would see more sensitivity to UV light would be

  1. If you were drenched in sweat and somehow the sweat focused the light/UV. This is highly unlikely as I don't believe any studies have been done to show that a water based solution causes a more intense sunburn.

(Here is a further explanation by another poster on wetness and sunburn https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/71263/why-does-wet-skin-sunburn-faster )

  1. The increased dilation of blood vessels results in a more red thus darker and more absorbent skin tone leading to more of a sunburn

Both of these are highly unlikely of increasing the sunburn, so in my opinion exercising shouldn't increase UV absorption or make a sunburn worse. Hope that helps.

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