A team of scientists have discovered that tiny chemical differences in how our skin reacts to ultraviolet light could explain why red heads are more likely to suffer skin cancer.
The team from <<>>, North Carolina, believe, the clue is in the skin and hair pigment melanin, and people with ginger hair have pigment that is chemically different from that of people with darker hair.
This difference they say might explain why people with red hair burn easily and are prone to sun damage.
Professor John Simon along with colleagues from the <<>> in Japan, used a special microscope and an ultraviolet (UV) laser to see what was happening to the pigment-containing structures in hair, called melanosomes, from redheads and black-haired people.
The study has shown that chemicals are likely to activate oxygen by taking up electrons, and such changes are known to be linked to cell damage and cancer.
Their work found that the red melanosomes were much more reactive than the black melanosomes and this suggests that it takes less of a trigger, in the form of UV rays in sunlight, to make potentially harmful cellular changes in people with red hair.
Professor Simon explains that activating oxygen can produce compounds called radicals that put oxidative stress on cells.
Such stress could ultimately lead to cancer and other diseases.
According to Simon not only do people with red hair have less protective pigment than people with darker hair, but the pigment they have appears to be more likely to react and produce harmful agents associated with cancer.