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A Heat Advisory [1]

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Date: 2022-07-20

Hi Daily Kos Folks,

This morning (7.19.22) I put a graphic of a Fahrenheit and Celsius thermometer on my computer desktop, the better to understand stories coming in from Europe and Asia, where they are having a heat wave. Awhile back I put information on another blog to respond to a story of some women who, last month, decided to take a hike up a mountain in Phoenix and several had to be carried down the mountain on rescue stretchers.

https://www.azfamily.com/2022/06/23/more-than-10-people-treated-heat-related-illness-echo-canyon-trail/

I’ve lived in the Phoenix area for over 30 years. We’ve been having some hot days so I’ve decided to re-post the same information here. If you come here for a visit, or, if you get some hot temperatures where you are, I hope this will help. The first part of the info is to remember back to when you were a kid and some morning you would tell your mom that you felt hot. Mom would take your temperature. If it was over 100°, she was worried. This is because if we have a high internal temperature-maybe 104°-our body organs can begin to shut down. You might have heard of someone going to the hospital because they had a high temperature.

Now I will tell you a story from when my sons were in school and it was the 1990s and all the kids were recycling at their schools. We live in a city which uses private trash hauling companies, and so since it costs money to do recycling, it was not offered as an option. At the time I was running a Keep America Beautiful affiliate, so I thought I could get a green waste recycling- composting- project funded. In 1994-5, I was able to get several small grants to cover the costs of bins and tools, etc, and two classes in different schools decided to do this as a project. They used food waste collected in a pail from the cafeteria plus a bag of straw provided to them.

I had worked up a curriculum as I ran a test bin in my garden. It had some little science experiments included. As I worked with the compost, something odd was happening. Two times each day I would shove a long thermometer into the compost to see if it was heating up to the high temperatures which would indicate bacterial activity. The temperatures were too low and also were not in line with the outside temperatures. I was puzzled by this. Then my husband who has a degree in an engineering field suggested that this might be the result of thermal mass. Yes! Of course that explained it! Heat from the outside was slowly penetrating the mass of compost, but because it took a long time, the temperature of middle of the mass was never quite the same as the outside day or night temperatures. There was always a lag-time, hotter or colder.

But here’s the crux of the matter: your body has a mass. If you stay out in high temperatures, your mass begins to heat up, the heat slowly penetrating into your middle where your organs are. Am I suggesting you are just as susceptible to thermal mass as a large pile of orange peels, melon rinds, drier lint, and coffee grounds? Yes. Get over it. Here’s what to do: When someone asks you to go on a hike in very hot weather, raise your hand up, palm out, to about shoulder level and say, “No, thanks! I’ll stay here at the hotel.” This simple technique could save your life.

Oh, also don’t reply to me with some nonsense about bringing “plenty” of water. Although insufficient water was also a problem for the women on this hike, drinking water will not prevent your mass from heating up. So, in conclusion: When it’s hot out, don’t allow yourself or anyone you love make a mass of themselves. Thank you for your kind attention.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/20/2111547/-A-Heat-Advisory

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