Cool down with the slick science of sweat
When the city streets have the relative humidity of a steam room, sweat has a hard time working its evaporative magic. Left with an overabundance of sweat this summer we might as well learn a little more about it.
Via NOVA:
Let’s be real: Sweat isn’t glamorous. As Angela Lamb, a dermatologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, puts it, “sweat is kind of the urine of the skin.”
That doesn’t make perspiration useless. The primary function of this salty stuff, which is secreted by the 2 to 4 million sweat glands that stud our skin, is to keep the body from overheating. As sweat evaporates, it absorbs heat from the body, and what was once warm and moist (strike one) becomes relatively dry and cool.