A participant during a heat stress trial inside a climate chamber at the University of Sydney.
Photographer: Mridula Amin/BloombergScientist Shuts Himself in 104F Chamber in Quest to Study Heat Stress
Research is reshaping the health protections deployed by governments and companies as the human and economic toll from a hotter world keeps mounting.
Earlier this summer, Glen Kenny spent three days confined to a special chamber inside his University of Ottawa lab where the daytime temperature was set at 40C (104F).
The purpose was to see how the researcher’s 61-year-old body held up in brutal indoor temperatures observed during a 2021 heat wave that killed hundreds of Canadians. Though he felt fine the first day, by the second, his internal temperature briefly hit nearly 40C — approaching a dangerous level — and by the third he’d lost roughly 10 pounds (4.5 kg).