Baldwin quoted in article on sweating

AirUCI faculty Jane Baldwin is quoted in a Grist article about keeping cool as global temperatures rise.  Perspiration cools the body with differences in efficiency depending on humidity in the air.  Generally it's been observed that higher levels of  humidity, temperature, and sunlight cause greater stress to the human body.  Still, there’s debate over how much humidity matters in health outcomes — it isn’t showing up as a key driver of deaths in real-world epidemiological data as expected.  Jane recently co-authored a study exploring this discrepancy. One explanation could be that epidemiological data tends to come from cooler parts of the world, like Europe and the United States, whereas data is limited from tropical countries like India, Ghana, and Brazil, where the link between humidity and death would likely be strongest. Nailing down an answer to this question would help scientists make more accurate predictions about how climate change will affect health, Jane said.   Read the article