Increasing temperatures recently can cause death as well as various diseases. For example, in Phoenix, the capital of the US state of Arizona; The temperature of the concrete on the street was 66 degrees, and the body temperature of people working outdoors was 41 degrees.
In fact, the world’s only “unliveable city without air conditioning” was claimed for Phoenix, which broke records after these temperatures. So, while high temperatures cause human deaths, what is the maximum temperature and humidity a person can withstand? Scientists have determined the answer to this question.
The human body’s temperature tolerance threshold has dropped
Scientists have revealed that even a healthy and young person can only withstand a temperature of 35 degrees with 100 percent humidity for only six hours. However, new research shows that this threshold may be much lower.
Sweat, which is the main tool used by the body to lower its core temperature when a certain temperature is reached, no longer evaporates from the skin after a while. As a result, it causes heatstroke, organ failure, and eventually death.
Colin Raymond of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory told AFP that this critical limit of 35 degrees, known as the “wet bulb temperature”, has been exceeded many times, especially in South Asia and the Persian Gulf.
Experts say that extreme heat doesn’t have to be at or near 35 degrees Celsius for it to kill people. Temperatures everyone; It can affect it in different ways, depending on age, health, and other social and economic factors. For example, in Europe, where there is rarely enough humidity to create dangerous “wet bulb temperatures”, it is estimated that more than 61,000 people died from the heat last summer.
The most striking data of the research was the prediction that wet bulb temperatures “will regularly exceed 35°C” in various parts of the world in the coming decades. To test this limit, however, researchers at Pennsylvania State University measured the core temperatures of young, healthy people in a heat chamber.
The researchers found that when participants’ bodies couldn’t stop their core temperatures from continuing to rise, they reached the critical limit of 35 degrees, at 30.6 degrees. The team stated that it takes between 5-7 hours to reach temperatures that can be considered really dangerous.
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