To my understanding we cool off via sweat by heating up the sweat and letting it evaporate off. That system should only function based on my understanding if the air is cooler than our skin. If that is the only system in play our body temp minimum should always be the temp of the outside air, making 110F weather fatal. What am I missing here?
In: Biology
You can cool off when the air temperature is above body temperature because the evaporation of sweat from your body takes off enough heat to keep your body at the right temperature. However, given a high enough humidity combined with the heat, you can get into a situation where your body can no longer cool to a safe temperature. This is called the “wet bulb” temperature. You wrap a wet rag around a thermometer and see what the temperature reading is. If the temperature of the wet thermometer (the wet bulb temperature) goes above human body temperature, that’s when things get very dangerous. Even if you’re sitting still in front of a fan, you can die from heat exhaustion because your body can’t get to a safe temperature from the evaporation of your sweat.
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