RESEARCH ON THE THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY AND DIATHERMANCY OF ALBINO RAT SKIN
Guy P. doLhery, Willard L. Derksen, Thomas I. Monahan · 1959
This foundational 1959 research on skin thermal properties helped establish principles still used in modern EMF safety calculations.
Plain English Summary
This 1959 technical report examined thermal conductivity (heat transfer) and diathermancy (heat transmission through tissues) in albino rat skin. The research focused on understanding how heat moves through biological tissue, which provides foundational knowledge for how electromagnetic energy interacts with living systems.
Why This Matters
While this study predates modern EMF research by decades, it represents crucial foundational work for understanding how energy transfers through biological tissues. The thermal properties studied here directly relate to how electromagnetic fields deposit energy in living tissue today. When your cell phone heats up against your ear, or when you feel warmth from a Wi-Fi router, you're experiencing the same thermal conductivity principles this research explored. The reality is that understanding tissue thermal properties became essential for developing safety standards for microwave ovens, cell phones, and other EMF-emitting devices. This early research on heat transfer through skin helped establish the scientific groundwork for calculating specific absorption rates (SAR) that regulators still use today to set exposure limits.
Exposure Information
Specific exposure levels were not quantified in this study. Duration: 1 to 25 seconds
Study Details
The objective of this investigation was the measurement of the kpc (thermal conductivity, density, specific heat) and the effective extinction coefficient for carbon-arc and tungsten radiation.
Bare and blackened rats were exposed to square wave pulses of thermal radiation from carbon-arc and ...
A kpc product of 10.6 x 10^4 cgs units for the denuded blackened skin of anesthetized rat skin was d...
The kpc product found, 10.6 x 10^4 cgs units, is significantly different than the value of 8.6 x 10^4 found for human skin. This difference means that for many burn situations the temperatures for human skin will be higher than those of rat skin by 10 percent. Temperatures in depth will have second order differences caused by differences in thermal diffusivity (kpc) as well as those resulting from differences in kpc. The values of kpc for rat and human skin can be used as a basis for computing the radiant exposures to cause burns to humans in terms of the equivalent radiant exposure for cause burns to rat skin. For the case of the cloth in contact or spaced, the radiant exposures for human skin are computed to be 10 percent less than those for rat skin. The data show a gradual increase in kpc as the time of exposure lengthened to more than 10 seconds. The value of 15 x 10^4 calculated for the temperatures found after a 2 second exposure resulted from temperatures which were 13 percent lower than those which would have been predicted from exposures of less than 10 seconds. If the change is caused by a systemic reaction the skin has different physical properties for extended exposures than those calculated on the basis of no time dependence. The applicability of the kpc product under these for other than demonstration purposes is questionable. The situation calls for an analysis involving systemic reactions or non-homogeneous thermal properties. Most exposures of skin covered with cloth which result in burns involve temperature histories which are longer than 10 seconds, even for very short thermal pulses. Analysis of situations involving temperature histories longer than 10 seconds should include consideration of the changes in skin properties which result from the skin's reaction to sustained elevated temperatures.
Show BibTeX
@article{research_on_the_thermal_conductivity_and_diathermancy_of_albino_rat_skin_g4121,
author = {Guy P. doLhery and Willard L. Derksen and Thomas I. Monahan},
title = {RESEARCH ON THE THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY AND DIATHERMANCY OF ALBINO RAT SKIN},
year = {1959},
}