The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance (2020)

Re:The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human t... by masklinn on Wednesday August 11, 2021 @01:20AM (#28138314)

> It turns out, in those temperatures, even young and healthy people can't survive.

Of note: that’s literal, even doing nothing and sitting in front of a fan you can’t cool down.

And do one of the issues 35 WBT “hides” is that any activity lowers the heat stress threshold. Sugarcane workers are already dying due to heat stress today, and have been for a while. There’s been an “epidemic” of “kidney disease” in central american sugarcane fields for a decade now, with young men showing rates of kidney diseases 15x the norm.

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Re:The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human t... by arp242 on Wednesday August 11, 2021 @01:35AM (#28138399)

According to Wikipedia[1]:

"Even heat-adapted people cannot carry out normal outdoor activities past a wet-bulb temperature of 32°C (90°F), equivalent to a heat index of 55°C (130°F). The theoretical limit to human survival for more than a few hours in the shade, even with unlimited water, is 35°C (95°F) – theoretically equivalent to a heat index of 70°C (160°F), though the heat index does not go that high."

So the practical limit is indeed much lower than 35°C; that's the limit at which you're basically going to fall over and die.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature

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Re:The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human t... by elchief on Wednesday August 11, 2021 @01:43AM (#28138457)

And people START dying, en masse, at 28C wet bulb (see chicago and vancouver heat waves)

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Re:The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human t... by djrogers on Wednesday August 11, 2021 @11:01AM (#28142833)

> en masse

I'm not sure that phrase means what you think it means... Yes, there were ~600 tragic deaths in BC from the heat dome, but en masse means 'as a whole' or 'as a group', and a .012% death rate does not really qualify there.

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Re:The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human t... by Zenbit_UX on Wednesday August 11, 2021 @12:18PM (#28143978)

If you understand French you'd know it just means in large quantities.

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Re:The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human t... by dotcommand on Thursday August 12, 2021 @11:11AM (#28157307)

But we aren't speaking french. We are speaking english and in english en masse doesn't mean a tiny fraction of people/group.

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Re:The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human t... by darkerside on Wednesday August 11, 2021 @06:40AM (#28140364)

At that heat, counterintuitively, sitting in front of a fan will only heat you up faster.

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