Postponement of incipient collapse due to work-induced heat stress by limited cooling
Four subjects completed five treadmill training sessions under comfortable to cool conditions and were calibrated to find an optimum combination of speed and grade on the treadmill which would produce a metabolic rate of 2000 Btu-hr. Dressed in an Apollo liquid cooling garment, each man underwent a total of four experiments in which the rate of heat extraction from the liquid cooling garment was adjusted to an amount which would cause a storage within the body of 1000 Btu/hr. Physiological measurements included skin temperature at 9 locations, rectal and ear canal probes, and heart rate. The increases in tolerance time for the various subjects and the various methods of emergency cooling, ranged from a low of six minutes to a high of 48 minutes, or from 8 to 102% of the baseline tolerance times. The largest gains were achieved in a subject whose tolerance endpoint was atypical, and whose baseline heat tolerance was unsually low.