TOLERANCE OF HEAT

Taranaki Daily News, 15 October 1934, Page 6

TOLERANCE OF HEAT

THE FORBEARANCE OF MAN. GREATER THAN THAT OF ANIMALS. Man can bear a greater degree of heat than any other warm-blooded animal. The hot room of a Turkish bath, with its temperature of 180 degrees, would kill a dog or a horse in a few minutes, but many human beings can stand it for quite long periods, and even enjoy it. The record in this respect is the case of the Spaniard who, on June 26, 1926, spent five minutes in an oven heated to 290 degrees Fahrenheit. When he left his pulse was beating 200 times to the minute, but he was none the worse for his experience. To have some idea of what 290 degrees means, remember that water boils at 212 degrees. A temperature of 90 degrees in the

shade renders most people listless and almost unable to move. Yet there are many men who work regularly in heat greater than that. The temperature in the stokehold of a steamer in the Tropics is often over 100 degrees, and men who tend blast furnaces are exposed to even greater heat. The hardest lot is that of the men who work in deep mines. Usually the temperature rises one degree for every 60ft of' depth, but there are exceptional cases where it rises more rapidly. In the famous Comstock silver mines, in Nevada, the temperature at the 1750 ft. level is 126 degrees. Yet men, with the aid of ice-water, work there regularly. In another shaft the temperature rises to 170 degrees. There men can work only for 10 or 15 minutes at a shift. The highest sun temperature ever recorded was at Muscat, on the Persian Gulf, where the black bulb solarthermometer registered 187 degrees.