The less air that UV light needs to penetrate, the less UVB light ozone in the air deflects, and the more UVB gets through to the ground. All other things being equal, more UV gets through at high altitudes, explaining the bad sunburns you can get while skiing. This should mean that vitamin D levels are higher at higher altitude, but few studies have looked at this issue.
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Dear Dr. Cannell,
I found your above post to be quite interesting. Thanks!
It led me to think about whether vitamin d deficiency might be present within the population of other South American countries, for example, Brazil….
The attached articles might be of interest to you:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22681928
And this should open to full text of above (I hope)
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2431/12/62
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19194104
And here is full text pdf (I hope it opens…otherwise I can send it to you, if you’d like to read it)
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CE8QFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fpublication%2F23980576_Prevalence_of_vitamin_D_insufficiency_in_Brazilian_adolescents%2Ffile%2F9fcfd50c5d21e4ea85.pdf&ei=cPYLUZfwMtPr0QGH5YGACA&usg=AFQjCNFI7NjyN6ihKNxzBmQGIo-7rQH7Ig&bvm=bv.41867550,d.dmQ
And finally,
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0004-27302006000400009&script=sci_arttext
Best,
Rita