UV-vis spectroscopy was used in a combined in-situ UV-vis/XAFS spectroscopic setup to study the synchrotron radiation effect on aqueous homogeneous copper solutions. Two different systems were studied. In the first study, the focus was on a copper bipyridine-catalyzed oxidation of benzyl alcohol to benzaldehyde with 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidinyl-1-oxy and base as cocatalysts. It was found that when the reaction mixture is exposed to the X-ray beam, the features present in the in-situ UV-vis spectrum develop differently compared to the situation when the reaction mixture is not exposed to the X-ray beam. Besides a temperature effect of the X-ray beam, both the UV-vis analysis and the XAFS analysis showed a reducing influence of the X-ray beam on the sample. To investigate this in more detail, we studied a series of dilute aqueous copper solutions from different precursor salts, viz., Cu(NO 3 ) 2 ‚3H 2 O, CuSO 4 ‚5H 2 O, CuCl 2 , and CuBr 2 . It was found that the different aqueous copper solutions have different stabilities under the influence of the X-ray beam. Especially the solution from the CuCl 2 precursor salt was found to be unstable and to be subjected to reduction. These examples illustrate the need for a second technique, such as in-situ UV-vis spectroscopy, to evaluate the effect of synchrotron radiation used to measure in-situ XAFS on catalytic systems.