This is in large part why historically industrialized factories tended to be concentrated in colder, higher latitude regions until the 20th century. Without refrigeration the work was far harder and more exhausting for the workers and that limited efficient use of labor.
A lady on 3rd shift who ran my machine had a near death incident and the company swept that under the rug along with plenty of other seriously concerning practices.
AMA!
Throughout much of the Southeastern United States, we regularly see Summer temps above 100F (37C), and humidity up to 90%.
One of the two Marine Corps training bases is in South Carolina where temps and humidity are often near these values and sometimes crest them.
Most of Florida frequently passes these values every Summer.
While it is not comfortable, I can assure you, most humans are able to exert themselves without being killed in minutes from this kind of exposure.
35°C at 100% humidity is about the human survivability limit (at 6h exposure). This makes a lot of sense because humans generate ~100W of heat, but require their core temperature to stay constant-- if the environment is too hot and evaporation ineffective because of humidity, then your thermoregulation just breaks down and you die, just like from high fever.
Remember that when you get a fever, your internal body temp can jump to 103+ and stay there for days. Even at a wet bulb temperature above 110, it's going to take time for your internal temperature to heat up to that level. There's nothing "potentially in minutes" about it for humans that are used to the heat.
Sure, you do eventually have to get somewhere cooler. But a wet bulb temperature of 105F is not going to be fatal for a well adapted human even after a few hours.
Check out the heat index page I linked above, or this similar one from OSHA: https://www.ohsa.com.au/services/heat-stress-monitoring/.
People adapt to it and can tolerate longer spans in it but it's still super taxing and requires regular breaks if you are doing any amount of serious activity. And of course lots of fans and anything else that can raise the evaporation rate and heat dissipation help.
The jokes ngl sound like the exact type of humor you'd expect from people who work out on the floor. Basically "oh well that's fucking horrifying, I bet we could make some money selling tickets".
100+F + 95% relative humidity will literally kill people, regardless of adaptations. Fans won’t help.
Fatal core temperature ranges are so close, even baseline metabolic heat can kill someone from hyperthermia in those conditions.
[https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10010916/#:~:text=F....]
In a general environmental sense, current estimates have 95F outside temps and 95% relative humidity being the point where mass die offs of mammals start to occur. It’s a major concern with global temperature changes [https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0913352107].
Skin temperatures > 95F (which will occur if air temp is 95F or higher and there is no evaporative cooling ability) inevitably lead to hyperthermia even in fit and acclimated individuals - even at rest
Most of the time, people just don’t realize what the actual relative humidity is. ‘Terribly humid’ is usually more like 60% RH.
95% is saturated, often foggy/misty.
‘At least it’s a dry heat’ in Deserts, which allows people to survive high temps, are often 5-10% relative humidity or even lower. There, the biggest challenge is staying hydrated enough to sustain the rapid loss of water. In some situations it’s possible to lose a gallon an hour. But it’s possible.
In 95% RH, that gallon makes no difference and you’ll flat out die instead.
Remember, when people get sick it's not typically fatal for them to hold a body temperature of 104 degrees, even if sustained for more than 24 hours. Being in a work environment at 95+% relative humidity and 100F is going to be unpleasant, but as long as you are well adapted to it and you get to somewhere cooler within a few hours you are going to be fine.
People push well beyond a wet bulb of 105F in saunas all the time, often sustained for 30+ minutes. I think if you had yourself ever been in a room that's 110F and 100% humidity (meaning it's literally raining continuously from condensation) you'd realize that it's really not that extreme of a temperature, and that it takes hours for your core to heat up to a place where you will be at risk of dying.
I’d argue you just haven’t actually been in those types of situations either. In that case I think they estimated 110ish air temps.
But maybe I’m misremembering - I heard it from the investigating safety officer though.
I have yet to see anyone actually able to work or function in actual 100% humidity and 100+ degrees temps for more than a few minutes before having serious problems.
I’ve seen plenty of people have problems in 60% humidity which everyone agreed was terrible. Mostly heat stroke.
People’s core temp is already just a hair under 100F, and even at rest are producing 100ish watts of thermal energy. It really doesn’t take much for it to start spiking if cooling is literally impossible.
That of course requires a strong fan blowing and regular, heavy hydration to sustain but it's feasible. So it's workable in an industrial environment where you can adjust the environment enough to get by but outdoors in large wild spaces like the Grand Canyon (as per your example) it's unlikely to be survivable for long.
And notably in an indoor environment there is a big difference between an operator running a machine or vehicle and an individual under heavy exertion. The added thermal stress of heavy exertion makes it less survivable as well.
So in the end it only really works in factory settings because:
- There's no sun to add radiative heat.
- There's fans and ventilation to maintain evaporative cooling.
- Workers can take regular or semi-regular breaks in a cooler or lower humidity environment to recover some from the thermal stress and to recover water and electrolytes.
- Those workers can limit their activity to rates of exertion/heat production that don't exceed the limited evaporative cooling they have access to.
As soon as you remove one of those advantages or increase the temperature much above 100F or increase the RH above 95%, survivability becomes way less likely.
If we assume that you are putting out 100 watts, you've got 3 hours at a wet bulb of 100F before you start having risk of death (if you are well adjusted to the heat).
And yes, I spend time every month in Saunas and Hammams with extreme temperatures. My favorite room is 195 degrees and 45% humidity. That translates to something like 150 degree wet bulb temperature, and I can happily stay in that room for about 20 minutes. (though 60 minutes would probably kill me). I've also spent plenty of time in Hammams (30+ minute sessions) where the temperature was 110F and the humidity was 100% (which means the entire room is fog and it's constantly dripping everywhere, practically raining). These aren't elite extremes in the sauna world, you'll find saunas close to these conditions all over the world.
If the environment is 95-105f we can assume no external heat transfer, but the environments you’re referring to seem to be well above that.
Based on some quick googling, it seems like surface area is on average 1.6 m^2 for women, and 1.9 m^2 for men. I get lost in the math, but there has to be significant heat transfer if it’s 15+F hotter than body temperature in the room yeah?
I know people who can tolerate that environment for 30+ minutes without injury (And I regularly do 20-25 minute stretches myself), which is why I'm so confident that 105F and 100% humidity is tolerable for a period of at least multiple hours.
Yes, eventually you'll heat stroke and die, you can't just live in a sauna. But it's not going to "kill you in minutes" if you are used to it, which is what a lot of people in this thread seem to be implying.