Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Stuff to
Speaker 3: Blow Your Mind, I wanted to talk about burning hair.
Speaker 3: That might be a kind of unusually niche or weird
Speaker 3: thing to look into. But I was inspired to do
Speaker 3: this a couple of weeks ago, on the fourth of
Speaker 3: July actually, when I was making food for a big
Speaker 3: family get together. You know, I was out in the
Speaker 3: backyard grilling, and I did something I have done many
Speaker 3: times before, which is burn all the hair off part
Speaker 3: of my arm. Oh no, yeah, turn and look. I
Speaker 3: mean like I wasn't like badly burned myself, like on
Speaker 3: my skin, but you know, at some point I looked
Speaker 3: down and realized, like, oh, what are all these weird
Speaker 3: little kind of pale curls. Oh I see? Okay.
Speaker 2: Do you say you've done this before? Do you at
Speaker 2: least alternate arms or is it just always the same
Speaker 2: arm that it gets?
Speaker 3: It's always my right arm because that's the arm I'm
Speaker 3: right handed doing that, you know, That's what I'm manipulating
Speaker 3: the food with. You know, sometimes it's more the hand,
Speaker 3: like the I don't know if it's gross to talk
Speaker 3: about your hand hair, like the hair on my knuckles,
Speaker 3: the hair on my back, the back of my hand
Speaker 3: that gets burned off. This time, it was mainly along
Speaker 3: like my forearm and the outside of my wrist. I
Speaker 3: wonder if other grill operators have had similar experiences, because
Speaker 3: I never burn my hand or arm hair when I'm
Speaker 3: grilling a small amount of food, like a couple of
Speaker 3: portions of whatever. It's always when I'm grilling for a
Speaker 3: big crowd. So I guess it has something to do
Speaker 3: with like trying to like fit a bunch of different
Speaker 3: individual items on the grill and then go down the
Speaker 3: line flipping them or moving them one at a time,
Speaker 3: and something about that means like I'm holding my arm
Speaker 3: directly over the hot part of the grill more or something.
Speaker 2: Ah, well, that that would make sense, because I was
Speaker 2: thinking about this, was like, Okay, I don't know that
Speaker 2: I've ever done this myself, but I think look back
Speaker 2: on all on the grilling I have done over the years,
Speaker 2: and it is generally just grilling for probably just for
Speaker 2: my immediate family. So it's feeling just for like two
Speaker 2: or three people, it's probably just going to be veggies
Speaker 2: that aren't on there very long. And yeah, for I
Speaker 2: guess a variety of reasons, and luck I have not
Speaker 2: like burnt a lot of arm hair on the grill,
Speaker 2: but I have to, so I have to ask like
Speaker 2: the follow up questions, like what you mentioned what it
Speaker 2: looked like, but that it was was that the primary
Speaker 2: way that you realize something had happened, or was there
Speaker 2: also like a skin level sensation And was there a smell?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 3: I mean, there's there's the feeling of heat obviously, which
Speaker 3: but that's just naturally the air because like I'm reaching
Speaker 3: over a hot fire, I think there is a smell normal,
Speaker 3: And in fact, I would say that the smell is
Speaker 3: probably the most characteristic and instantly recognizable sensory part of
Speaker 3: the burning hair experience. Right, I mean, almost anybody I
Speaker 3: think can immediately think of the smell of burning hair.
Speaker 3: It seems to stick in people's minds, even if hair
Speaker 3: burning is like not something that happens very often to them.
Speaker 3: It's just sort of I don't know, do you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, Like it just sort of like sticks
Speaker 3: in your memory what that smells like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'd be kind of wired, I guess,
Speaker 2: to recognize.
Speaker 3: It specifically in the context of grilling, though, there are
Speaker 3: already a lot of volatiles in the air, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of smoke, a lot of particles and everything. It's
Speaker 3: an intense smell experience already, So I think the smell
Speaker 3: of the burning hair, especially if there's only a little
Speaker 3: bit of it, just kind of blends in more. You
Speaker 3: might not notice that first. In this case. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: remember just like looking down at my arm, the part
Speaker 3: that had been hot, and being like, oh, yeah, that
Speaker 3: happened again.
Speaker 2: Okay that yeah, that would make sense. There are a
Speaker 2: lot of competing smells going on there. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But anyway, this experience got me wondering about the science
Speaker 3: of burning hair. I started to wonder, you know, some
Speaker 3: questions about the basic science and chemistry involve like how
Speaker 3: flammable is human hair, and why does it smell that way?
Speaker 3: And so forth. I was looking around for good sources
Speaker 3: on the on the question of the sort of the
Speaker 3: underlying chemistry of the smell of burning hair, and basically
Speaker 3: the best sources I found pointed me to the presence
Speaker 3: of sulfur. Of course, hair is mostly made of keratin,
Speaker 3: which is primarily protein, and of course those proteins, when
Speaker 3: they're burned, release their own sort of smells. There are
Speaker 3: characteristic protein burning smells that we might associate with the
Speaker 3: burning of other types of skin and even fingernails and
Speaker 3: things like that. But a big thing is the presence
Speaker 3: of sulfur. According to a paper that I'm going to
Speaker 3: mention in a little bit, human hair is approximately five
Speaker 3: percent sulfur, and that sulfur content is largely responsible for
Speaker 3: or the characteristic smell. And this is interesting to me
Speaker 3: because it explains a similarity at least as far as
Speaker 3: I can remember. That burning hair, to me, smells a
Speaker 3: little bit like lighting a match. Lighting a match produces
Speaker 3: the distinctive smell of sulfur dioxide or generally sulfur compounds,
Speaker 3: which happened because there is usually sulfur content in a matchhead.
Speaker 3: It's part of what burns to set the match alight.
Speaker 3: As a side note, apparently it is kind of known
Speaker 3: that you can temporarily mask other unpleasant smells. A commonly
Speaker 3: referenced one is the smell of feces by striking a match.
Speaker 3: Have you ever heard this before?
Speaker 2: Rob? Oh? Yeah, yeah, of course, you know. I mean
Speaker 2: sometimes even see that in at least residential bathrooms, you know,
Speaker 2: there will be like some matches out by the bathroom facilities,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's interesting. I don't know if I ever made
Speaker 3: that connection, I would have assumed that if there were
Speaker 3: matches out, they're usually paired with a candle, and the
Speaker 3: idea is that you would use the matches to light
Speaker 3: like a pleasantly scented candle. And I always understood that
Speaker 3: as the ideas you would use a pleasantly scented candle
Speaker 3: to mask the smell of feces in a bathroom or something.
Speaker 2: I guess often but not always, I guess. And then
Speaker 2: there is also like the kind of just a saying
Speaker 2: right like oh, there's a bad smell that may be
Speaker 2: associated with digestion. Someone will be like, ah, somebody light
Speaker 2: a match, you know.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, Well, I may have misunderstood those sayings as well.
Speaker 3: I probably would interpret that as like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: what's the polite way of putting it, lighting a fart
Speaker 3: kind of comment.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't Well, I'm not sure that that was
Speaker 2: the level of excitement, like it's a bad smell in here,
Speaker 2: let's see if it can busts. It's more like there's
Speaker 2: an unpleasant odor. Let us light a match so that
Speaker 2: the smell of that struck match might mask the stink
Speaker 2: that has enveloped us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, well, so now I'm understanding several things about
Speaker 3: the world differently than I did before this conversation. But anyway,
Speaker 3: so it makes me think about I see like a
Speaker 3: candle in the bathroom and some matches. Maybe I'm thinking
Speaker 3: about the mechanism differently. It's actually the lighting of the
Speaker 3: match more so than the candle that helps, sort of
Speaker 3: like calm your mind about the smells in there. But anyway,
Speaker 3: the idea is that the sulfur compounds released by striking
Speaker 3: a match overpower other smells in our olfactory recognition. I
Speaker 3: have seen it written in a couple of places that
Speaker 3: the idea is when you strike a match like it
Speaker 3: burns up the bad gases responsible for causing the smell
Speaker 3: in the air. That does not seem to be true.
Speaker 3: It's more kind of like your nose and your brain
Speaker 3: are primed to just let the smell of the struck match.
Speaker 3: I think this will be primarily the smell of sulfur dioxide.
Speaker 3: It just take over your smell sensing abilities. But it
Speaker 3: makes me wonder if the burning of hair also releases
Speaker 3: these sulfur compounds that are responsible for the characteristic smell,
Speaker 3: if you could likewise cover up the you know, these
Speaker 3: unpleasant bodies body aroma's, fecal smells and stuff by burning hair.
Speaker 2: Well we're not advising that, no, no, but just from
Speaker 2: like a chemical standpoint, okay, perhaps so.
Speaker 3: One of the most surprising and interesting things I discovered
Speaker 3: by looking into these questions about the science of burning
Speaker 3: hair was that some of the best research I could
Speaker 3: find on this came from studies about hair catching on
Speaker 3: fire in spaceships.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, attack ships on fire off the shoulder of orion, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the main paper I was looking at is
Speaker 3: called the Flammability of Human Hair in Exploration Atmospheres from
Speaker 3: the year two thousand and nine in the SAE Journal
Speaker 3: International Journal of Aerospace by Sandra L. Olson, Devon W. Griffin,
Speaker 3: David L. L. Be, Gary A. Ruff, and Elizabeth A. Smith.
Speaker 3: And so the authors here begin by referencing an older
Speaker 3: study that I'll mention in a second that says the
Speaker 3: flammability of both skin and hair has actually been a
Speaker 3: subject of major concern since the early stages of the
Speaker 3: US BASE program, and they refer back to an older paper,
Speaker 3: one from nineteen sixty eight by Robert L. Durfey called
Speaker 3: the Flammability of Skin and Hair in Oxygen enriched Atmospheres.
Speaker 3: This was published in the OR as part of a
Speaker 3: USAF School of Aerospace Medicine technical report. This was from
Speaker 3: December nineteen sixty eight, and durfy begins this study from
Speaker 3: sixty eight by saying, quote, observations after recent fires involving
Speaker 3: human subjects in oxygen atmospheres indicate that the humans may
Speaker 3: have contributed to the spread of fires through combustion of
Speaker 3: their skin and hair. So obviously that's quite morbid. But
Speaker 3: I was wondering what this refers to, and I figured
Speaker 3: that since this was published in nineteen sixty eight, I
Speaker 3: think it almost certainly must be referring, at least in
Speaker 3: part to the tragedy of the Apollo one fire, which
Speaker 3: killed three astronauts on January twenty seventh, nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 3: Those astronauts were Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger B. Chaffey,
Speaker 3: and they died during a launch test that was less
Speaker 3: than a month before the scheduled mission, so they weren't
Speaker 3: actually in space. It was a ground test on Earth
Speaker 3: before the launch of an orbital mission. And the tragedy
Speaker 3: was that a flash fire broke out inside the cabin
Speaker 3: of the command module. The fire probably started with There
Speaker 3: could have been several ignition points, but it may have
Speaker 3: been an electrical arc from faulty wiring, maybe connected to
Speaker 3: some kind of chemical present like a volume of anti
Speaker 3: freeze fluid called glycol. But however it started, it spread
Speaker 3: very rapidly due to the enriched oxgen atmosphere pressurized inside
Speaker 3: the cabin. It was basically pure oxygen in there, and
Speaker 3: due to a variety of combustible materials spread throughout the
Speaker 3: cabin interior. Now, remember, as we've talked about on the
Speaker 3: show before, fire needs three things to burn. It needs heat,
Speaker 3: it needs fuel, and it needs oxygen. Obviously, in this scenario,
Speaker 3: there could have been an initial heat source, some kind
Speaker 3: of ignition point. There would have been lots of oxygen
Speaker 3: because it was a pure oxygen atmosphere inside the command module.
Speaker 3: And so the question is what was the fuel and
Speaker 3: what was the fuel roll of various substances including parts
Speaker 3: of human bodies inside the command module, and so this
Speaker 3: study was looking into human hair and skin, and so
Speaker 3: one thing it says that is that taken as a whole,
Speaker 3: even with enriched oxygen around, human skin is not especially
Speaker 3: flammable because it has a lot of water in it, right,
Speaker 3: So there is a major heat sink in human bodies
Speaker 3: where heat has to be continually applied from the outside
Speaker 3: in order for it to burn. There's a lot of water.
Speaker 3: That water must be turned into water vapor, so it
Speaker 3: doesn't catch fire easily. However, there are sort of little
Speaker 3: layers on the outside of skin and also hair which
Speaker 3: can catch fire in enriched oxygen environments much more easily.
Speaker 3: This study from sixty eight found that a high concentration
Speaker 3: of inert helium in the air in an environment, in
Speaker 3: this case seventy five percent helium, would prevent hair from
Speaker 3: burning at regular atmospheric pressure. And the study also tested
Speaker 3: various protective measures such as smearing the skin and hair
Speaker 3: with protective lotions and greases and covering it with flame
Speaker 3: repellent cloth.
Speaker 2: Was just shaving off all the hair just not an option.
Speaker 2: Seems like if I got to choose between the two
Speaker 2: for my space mission. I would just say, well, can
Speaker 2: we just buzz it all off?
Speaker 3: That is an option that is discussed in the two
Speaker 3: thousand and nine paper, which I'll come back to now.
Speaker 3: So yeah, So initially they cite the Derfy study and
Speaker 3: they say, as a general matter, there are several factors
Speaker 3: to consider that could increase the risk of fires within
Speaker 3: spacecraft or space exploration testing environments. And a big one
Speaker 3: they call out is the same thing we were just
Speaker 3: talking about, elevated oxygen levels. So in some cases ambient
Speaker 3: within spacecraft, but also in cases where supplemental oxygen is
Speaker 3: being provided through a mask. Now, when would there be
Speaker 3: supplemental oxygen inside a spacecraft, You could say, possibly in
Speaker 3: a medical intervention for an ill or injured crew member.
Speaker 3: They might have extra oxygen supplied to them. This is
Speaker 3: common in hospitals on Earth as well, or possibly during
Speaker 3: emergencies such as the leak of toxic chemicals or in
Speaker 3: fighting a pre existing fire. Now, the authors point out
Speaker 3: something interesting about the case of breathing pure oxygen through
Speaker 3: a mask. They say, quote, for every breath of pure
Speaker 3: oxygen breathed in, the exhaled breath still contains ninety five
Speaker 3: percent of the oxygen. This creates an environment of increased
Speaker 3: oxygen near the head and chest. Now I did not
Speaker 3: know that and don't think I would have thought about
Speaker 3: that before, but from what I looked up in other sources, yes,
Speaker 3: this seems right. In breathing say normal air on Earth,
Speaker 3: which is roughly twenty one percent oxygen and the rest
Speaker 3: is mostly nitrogen. In rough terms, that air on Earth.
Speaker 3: You know, if you say twenty percent is oxygen, about
Speaker 3: fifteen percent of the air you breathe out is oxygen.
Speaker 3: So what happened to that missing five percent of the air, Well,
Speaker 3: about five percent of the air is oxygen that is
Speaker 3: absorbed by the lungs. So when you breathe in, you
Speaker 3: absorb about five percent of the air, about a quarter
Speaker 3: of the total oxygen content of the air, and then
Speaker 3: that oxygen is replaced mostly with carbon dioxide when you
Speaker 3: breathe out. So that leaves you with what the author said.
Speaker 3: If you're breathing pure oxygen, say throw a mask in
Speaker 3: one of these scenarios, what you breathe out would be
Speaker 3: roughly ninety five percent oxygen. So the area around your
Speaker 3: head as you're exhaling is going to have a lot
Speaker 3: more oxygen in it than it normally would now note
Speaker 3: with regard to ambient oxygen, the oxygen levels used in
Speaker 3: different space exploration and environments have varied. The International Space
Speaker 3: Station actually maintains roughly the Earth's atmosphere mixture of gases
Speaker 3: in the air, so about twenty one percent oxygen. The
Speaker 3: rest is nitrogen, but the nitrogen has to be supplied
Speaker 3: through like bringing up tanks of nitrogen to make up
Speaker 3: that difference. So that and other considerations have led people
Speaker 3: to plan that in some other cases there might be
Speaker 3: higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere breathed within space
Speaker 3: exploration contexts in the future. The author's cite a few
Speaker 3: other examples. They cite past examples as well. They say
Speaker 3: the Apollo missions and sky Lab used higher oxygen levels,
Speaker 3: and as of the time of this paper, there were
Speaker 3: plans for other missions that the authors say would have
Speaker 3: used higher oxygen concentrations. They cite the Orion Crew exploration vehicle.
Speaker 3: They cite the Altai Lander, which would have been at
Speaker 3: the time this mission was planned, would have been a
Speaker 3: landing vehicle for a US mission returning to the Moon,
Speaker 3: and they also talk about higher oxygen concentrations in possible
Speaker 3: lunar surface habitats, So there would be numerous scenarios where
Speaker 3: you're in a space exploration context and you would have
Speaker 3: increased oxygen levels. Either there's just ambiently increased oxygen in
Speaker 3: the particular mission or vehicle you're talking about, or you
Speaker 3: might be needing to give somebody oxygen for some reason,
Speaker 3: in which case there would be much increased oxygen around
Speaker 3: their head and chest. The authors also point out that
Speaker 3: certain medical interventions could provide ignition points, such as you
Speaker 3: could potentially start a fire during defibrillation, and this could
Speaker 3: happen even on Earth. Really, yes, I went and read
Speaker 3: about this. It seems to put some fears at rest.
Speaker 3: It is very rare. This is not something that commonly happens,
Speaker 3: but there have been reported cases. For example, the following study.
Speaker 3: I was looking at a study published in the Journal
Speaker 3: of the American College of Cardiology by Sanchez at All
Speaker 3: from the year twenty twenty three. It talks about a
Speaker 3: case where a seventy two year old male showed up
Speaker 3: at the emergency room. He was suffering atrial fibrillation an
Speaker 3: erratic elevated heart rate, and there were several interventions, including
Speaker 3: the use of a defibrillator to stabilize the regular heartbeat.
Speaker 3: So they put the leads on your chest and they
Speaker 3: send a charge to try to synchronize the muscles of
Speaker 3: the heart. The report says, quote, the defibrillator pads ignited
Speaker 3: in flames after the defibrillation button was pressed. The betting
Speaker 3: and oxygen mask also caught fire. Now that's something you
Speaker 3: don't usually think of happening. However, the author stressed that
Speaker 3: this is extremely rare. They say there are only two
Speaker 3: known cases in the medical literature that they could identify.
Speaker 3: And also fortunately the patient did not suffer actually suffer
Speaker 3: burn injuries. What was burned appeared to be the pads
Speaker 3: and the patient's body hair in some parts of the bedding.
Speaker 3: But they say to avoid this happening, there are several
Speaker 3: steps you can do. Of course, the increased oxygen from
Speaker 3: supplemental oxygen probably contributed here, so they say you can
Speaker 3: remove or place oxygen masks or nasal canula further away
Speaker 3: from the patient's chest when you're doing a defibrillation charge.
Speaker 3: They say that you can prepare the pads better, make
Speaker 3: sure that they have complete attachment to the chest wall.
Speaker 3: They say, chest hair should be trimmed ideally that that helps,
Speaker 3: and they also say avoid alcohol products during the preparation
Speaker 3: for the defib anyway, So that was sort of a tangent.
Speaker 3: But defibrillation is one of the scenarios the authors mentioned
Speaker 3: that could possibly provide an ignition point in space. But
Speaker 3: coming back to the burning hair in space study, the
Speaker 3: authors also mentioned cauterization as a medical procedure that could
Speaker 3: provide increased risk of fire in an oxygen enriched environment.
Speaker 3: So you pair the oxygenerate atmosphere in some spacecraft and
Speaker 3: space exploration environments with various ignition scenarios, and you've got
Speaker 3: the heat and the oxygen. So the third ingredient is fuel,
Speaker 3: and here the authors point to the presence of potentially
Speaker 3: flammable clothing and hair. Now in addition to the specific
Speaker 3: medical ignition scenarios mentioned above like defibrillation and cauterization, the
Speaker 3: authors note the conclusion of previous research, especially regarding Apollo one,
Speaker 3: that it should basically be considered impossible to eliminate all
Speaker 3: ignition sources in a spacecraft environment. You're always going to
Speaker 3: have things that could generate sparks or electrical arcs or
Speaker 3: hot surfaces so way to limit the risk of fire
Speaker 3: is to control access of those ignition sources to fuel
Speaker 3: by removing combustible materials or making them less combustible.
Speaker 2: You know, I've been watching enough alien movies recently to
Speaker 2: of course know that standard issue. If you're going on
Speaker 2: a space mission, you have a flamethrower on board, you
Speaker 2: have or at least a flamer unit. I don't think
Speaker 2: it's it's necessary. It's not nothing that's supposed to be
Speaker 2: like spitting jelly gasoline or anything like that, Like not
Speaker 2: a military flame thrower, but still a unit that shoots
Speaker 2: a big plume of fire at things.
Speaker 3: Why do they have that, That's a good question. Is
Speaker 3: there an industrial use or do they make them? Maybe
Speaker 3: they make them now that.
Speaker 2: I I think sometimes that's the case. But I don't
Speaker 2: know the best I could do putting this together, watching
Speaker 2: the films in the back of my mind, always thinking
Speaker 2: like flamer is probably not a great idea in an enclosed,
Speaker 2: sealed environment without even factoring in and all the stuff
Speaker 2: we've been talking about here. But I'm guessing you could
Speaker 2: make a case for okay, if you are dealing with
Speaker 2: some sort of a life form situa biological threat, like
Speaker 2: some sort of a bug, not a full blown xenomorph,
Speaker 2: you know, but just kind of whatever is expected to occur.
Speaker 2: Then I guess you can make a case for a
Speaker 2: flame unit. And then on top of that, if you're
Speaker 2: looking at some sort of a potential like boarding scenario,
Speaker 2: like a boarding action, like people coming on your ship,
Speaker 2: they aren't supposed to be there and you want to
Speaker 2: encourage them to leave or to back off, I guess
Speaker 2: a flame unit you could make some sort of a
Speaker 2: case that a flame unit is better than a gun
Speaker 2: that could potentially puncture the whole. But I don't know. Okay,
Speaker 2: once you factor all this in, though, is the risk
Speaker 2: of fire greater? I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think we'll have to assume that, like the Nostromo
Speaker 3: and other alien environments, just to use, they're more like
Speaker 3: the ISS, like they supply the nitrogen. They have a
Speaker 3: more earth like atmosphere rather than the oxygen enriched atmospheres
Speaker 3: that would increase the risk of using flames.
Speaker 2: Sure, Plus everything's a little bit wet than a stromo,
Speaker 2: so maybe that helps.
Speaker 3: Now. The authors of this paper note that a lot
Speaker 3: of individual mission durations are short enough that astronauts don't
Speaker 3: need to cut their hair in space, but even that
Speaker 3: does happen. Sometimes the space haircuts are real. They include
Speaker 3: a photo from the ISS of a space haircut where
Speaker 3: Russian cosmonaut Valerie Corzun is doing a haircut for the
Speaker 3: American astronaut Peggy Whitson in the year two thousand and two.
Speaker 3: And you can see like he's got the scissors and
Speaker 3: a comb in his hands and she's holding a like
Speaker 3: a hose up by her head. It's a vacuum cleaner hose,
Speaker 3: and I guess that's to suck in all the clippings
Speaker 3: right as their release, because man, oh, you think hair
Speaker 3: gets everywhere during a normal Earth haircut with regular gravity,
Speaker 3: you know, I feel like I get a haircut in
Speaker 3: days later, I'm still finding hair. It's like I'm not
Speaker 3: even wearing the same clothes. What's going on. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so in microgravity you could imagine it's a real headache.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like you got to make a strong
Speaker 2: case for that haircut and or be really good with
Speaker 2: that vacuum house.
Speaker 3: But anyway, given all these considerations, it's important to know
Speaker 3: for planning future space missions in these abnormal atmospheric and
Speaker 3: gravity conditions and especially in more unique scenarios where you
Speaker 3: would need to supply somebody with supplemental oxygen. How flammable
Speaker 3: are the fuel sources you would find inside a spaceship,
Speaker 3: And in the case of this study, they looked into
Speaker 3: how flammable is human hair with these increased concentrations of oxygen.
Speaker 3: So the authors did some experiments. They tried to simulate
Speaker 3: what it's like in various space exploration environments using an
Speaker 3: apparatus called a low speed flow tunnel, where you maintain
Speaker 3: a forced flow of a controlled gas mixture. In this case,
Speaker 3: it was mounted inside of a NASA Zero Gravity Research
Speaker 3: Facility drop rig, so that was to simulate different gravity conditions.
Speaker 3: They tried a few different lengths and styles of human hair.
Speaker 3: They mounted them on a rack, and they said that
Speaker 3: basically the flame spread was pretty similar for the different
Speaker 3: hair styles tested different lengths. The spread was sort of
Speaker 3: quick at first over the sort of frizzy outer layer
Speaker 3: of the surface of a hair mass, and then would
Speaker 3: be followed, especially in the cases of longer hair where
Speaker 3: there's a lot of hair, followed by quote continued bulk burning.
Speaker 3: And they found that, oh, yeah, it is absolutely right
Speaker 3: that increasing oxygen will increase the flame spread rate of
Speaker 3: hair significantly. They say it's by more than an order
Speaker 3: of magnitude, so it's major. And Rabbi included a couple
Speaker 3: of pictures for you to look at here of what
Speaker 3: the hair looked like after being exposed to fire in
Speaker 3: normal atmosphere versus in a thirty percent oxygen atmosphere, and
Speaker 3: it's a major difference. The thirty percent oxygen one looks
Speaker 3: way more like a matted mass of keratin ash goo.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, absolutely, Chris, So this is something that I
Speaker 3: don't think I ever would have thought of before, but
Speaker 3: the authors say, yes, their findings show that quote in
Speaker 3: the elevated oxygen concentration environments planned for future exploration missions,
Speaker 3: hair flammability becomes an important consideration for crue safety. With
Speaker 3: the high flame spread rates reported here, an astronaut's entire
Speaker 3: head would be engulfed in flames in seconds, and serious
Speaker 3: injury could occur before the flames are extinguished. It is
Speaker 3: suggested that acceptable mitigation strategies such as hair coverings be
Speaker 3: adopted and shaving be encouraged. And they talk about a
Speaker 3: number of different interventions you could employ, so you could, yeah,
Speaker 3: you could like cut hair. You could shave parts of
Speaker 3: the body, you could shave the head. You could cover
Speaker 3: the hair with flame retardant kind of hair coverings and materials.
Speaker 3: You can put flame resistant gels and jellies in the hair.
Speaker 3: They mentioned several of these that in some cases are
Speaker 3: used and have been used. So there are different interventions
Speaker 3: you could do. But ultimately they say, if you have
Speaker 3: elevated oxygen levels and you are trying to prevent fires,
Speaker 3: you really do need to think about human hair.
Speaker 2: Wow, you know, I can't help but think about like
Speaker 2: the sci fi ramifications. And on one level, I love
Speaker 2: the idea of like hairless shaved astronauts. You know that
Speaker 2: you have removed all their hair in order to prevent
Speaker 2: this from happening. But on the other hand, I kind
Speaker 2: of like the idea of a bunch of astronauts that
Speaker 2: are using some sort of especially made palmade. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: I'll have some sort of like a maybe slicked back
Speaker 2: greaser look going on with this special space space goop.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everybody looks like John Travolta in Greece. I mean
Speaker 3: that they've all got the space pompadours that the Yeah,
Speaker 3: we're like flame flame retardant jelly in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the Misfits right where they have a hair
Speaker 2: all crafted. Now, I got to keep an eye out
Speaker 2: for it. Keep watching all these space movies, and I
Speaker 2: have not been paying enough attention to everyone's hairstyles. Which
Speaker 2: space movie has the has the most slicked back hair?
Speaker 2: Where is the most palmde employed in science fiction? I'm
Speaker 2: gonna have to be on the lookout for it now.
Speaker 3: So anyway, this is one of these classic rabbit holes
Speaker 3: I love on our show that I would not have
Speaker 3: expected to go in this direction at all. I was
Speaker 3: initially just looking into, like what's going on with the
Speaker 3: chemistry of burning hair, and I ended up with the
Speaker 3: threats of hair catching on fire in space.
Speaker 2: You know, we mentioned boarding actions earlier, and one of
Speaker 2: the first places that my mind went when we started
Speaker 2: looking into this was what about black Beard the Pirate?
Speaker 2: So black Beard the Pirate was, of course a real
Speaker 2: person that has been mythologized and fictionalized to varying degrees
Speaker 2: over time, But this was an actual pirate, Edward Teach,
Speaker 2: who reportedly lives sixteen eighty through seventeen eighteen. And yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a great deal of legend about this man, including
Speaker 2: the idea that he would affix slow matches. Sometimes these
Speaker 2: are just called fuses, but slow matches were they would
Speaker 2: have a like coils of this stuff. They burn slow,
Speaker 2: as the name implies, they burn very hot, and they're
Speaker 2: used for igniting like the fuses for cannons, explosive materials, grenades,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing, but also of course could be
Speaker 2: used to like light pipes and so forth.
Speaker 3: I think even at the time, well I don't know
Speaker 3: if exactly at this time, but they were used, and
Speaker 3: even handheld firearms at the time, like muskets and stuff
Speaker 3: would have like a they'd have like a powder pan
Speaker 3: with a slow match that ignited it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so it would be common to have these
Speaker 2: on hand. But of course, part of the mystique of
Speaker 2: Blackbeard is that he wouldn't just have burning slow matches,
Speaker 2: say on his belt or whatnot. He would have them
Speaker 2: under his hat. And I think this sometimes gets conflated
Speaker 2: into being like woven into his hair or even in
Speaker 2: his beard anyway that you frame it. Slow matches in
Speaker 2: very close proc simity to what is generally described and
Speaker 2: or depicted as wild hair and beard. You know, Like
Speaker 2: the idea here is that he would do this before
Speaker 2: a raid, before a boarding action to make himself look
Speaker 2: more fearsome with those smoking fuses, with like the little
Speaker 2: pinpoints of red ember sticking out on either side of
Speaker 2: his fearsome head.
Speaker 3: So, of course I'm familiar with the story. I've heard
Speaker 3: it many times, but this is one of those things
Speaker 3: that has never made sense to me, because I think, like,
Speaker 3: how how do you actually do that and like operate
Speaker 3: like move around and stuff with things on fire tangled
Speaker 3: in your beard, And wouldn't it be producing some amount
Speaker 3: of smoke or fumes at least would that beginning in
Speaker 3: your face? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess it's a very just fume intensive
Speaker 2: environment anyway, If their cannon's going off, muskets firing, and
Speaker 2: then you know folks are smoking as well, that's something
Speaker 2: worth noting, I guess is I've never been a smoker. Smokers,
Speaker 2: of course, by practice, are going to have frequently have
Speaker 2: burning objects in close proximity to their hair and beard,
Speaker 2: and may have additional thoughts on all of this, like
Speaker 2: I don't know how often, how often, say just a
Speaker 2: smoker of cigarettes with a prominent beard would encounter some
Speaker 2: sort of a beard burn scenario. But then again, again
Speaker 2: we have to remember that a slow match would have
Speaker 2: I believe burnt much hotter than your average cigarette or
Speaker 2: pipe or whatnot. Yeah, anyway, so yeah, I had questions
Speaker 2: about this too, liked, did he really do this? Was
Speaker 2: this safe? I'm I mean, I'm not particularly worried about
Speaker 2: Blackbeard's personal safety choices, but is this feasible? And so
Speaker 2: I was looking around at some serious texts about black
Speaker 2: Beard and pirates, and a number of them, number of
Speaker 2: them didn't really do much deliberation on this point. They
Speaker 2: just kind of mention it, and there's you know, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of there's a lot more pressing history to
Speaker 2: discuss here, So not a slide at those sources at all.
Speaker 2: I also ran across at least a few more casual
Speaker 2: commentators who dismissed it as a myth because, as they said, well,
Speaker 2: this would have surely caught his hair on fire, so
Speaker 2: it you know, he almost certainly didn't do it. But
Speaker 2: I did finally find discussion of it in Dinnerson Little's
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen book The Golden Age of Piracy, The Truth
Speaker 2: behind Pirate Myths, and so he attributes you know, a
Speaker 2: lot of this myth making to Captain Charles Johnson's seventeen
Speaker 2: twenty four book A General History of the Robberies and
Speaker 2: Murders of the most most Notorious Pirates that's spelled p
Speaker 2: y R A t e S.
Speaker 3: Gotta love pirate with y.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And we have to note that the actual identity
Speaker 2: of this author remains unknown. There is apparently no record
Speaker 2: of such a Captain Johnson, and some have even argued
Speaker 2: that the author here is actually Daniel Dafoe, Yeah, of
Speaker 2: Robinson Crusoe, Yeah, exactly. So we ultimately don't know for sure.
Speaker 2: I think historians kind of go back and forth with
Speaker 2: different theories, but it seems to be agreed upon that
Speaker 2: whoever wrote this they had some talent for fiction. They
Speaker 2: also had a great love of facts and details, and
Speaker 2: the resulting work is kind of a mix of the two.
Speaker 2: So you have you do have some factual information that's
Speaker 2: very helpful to the historian, but you also have plenty
Speaker 2: of just blatant fiction mixed in as well.
Speaker 3: Oh well, that kind of source is in a way great.
Speaker 3: I mean that makes it not as very frustrating as
Speaker 3: a historical source, but also an interesting problem for historians.
Speaker 2: Right right now, on the slow match in or adjacent
Speaker 2: to the hair. In particular, the author little here adds
Speaker 2: the following quote. Still pirates, privateers, merchant seamen, and naval
Speaker 2: seamen tasked with throwing grenades in battle sometimes carried the
Speaker 2: burning slow match needed to light the grenade fuses in
Speaker 2: their hats, but it was more usual to tie it
Speaker 2: around a wrist or pin it to their clothing or
Speaker 2: hat with a match case. Although one image of Jean Bart,
Speaker 2: the famous French privateer in the service of France, shows
Speaker 2: him with a length of lighted match hold in his teeth.
Speaker 2: Ugh and so He adds that Captain Johnson or whoever
Speaker 2: was behind that pseudonym, would have surely seen the image
Speaker 2: in question. They would have been familiar with this idea,
Speaker 2: this image of Bart and so He and He also
Speaker 2: points out that the slow match again burns slow but
Speaker 2: very hot by design in order to light fuses that,
Speaker 2: despite what movies and Looney Tune cartoons portray, can be
Speaker 2: rather hard to light. That's why you need a slow fuse.
Speaker 2: You can't just you know, you couldn't just strike a
Speaker 2: match and so forth. You need something hot and more
Speaker 2: or less consistent. And then this is where he finally
Speaker 2: gets to the part. This is where little gets to
Speaker 2: the part that I was wondering about. He adds, quote,
Speaker 2: slow matches could thus easily ignite hair, and a pirate's greasy, tarry,
Speaker 2: flaming beard would have been a hellish spectacle, and one
Speaker 2: probably never repeat it. So I guess that's as close
Speaker 2: to an answer as I could really find. Basically, like, yes,
Speaker 2: slow matches on the hat, in the hat and so forth,
Speaker 2: that's going to be expected to a degree, But there's
Speaker 2: like a fine line. You wouldn't want to push it
Speaker 2: too far, and if someone did push it too far,
Speaker 2: it would be notable. You know, that pirate would ever
Speaker 2: would forever be remembered as the guy whose head went
Speaker 2: up in a ball of fire because he was trying
Speaker 2: to be a little bit too dramatic in the boarding action,
Speaker 2: and other pirates would decide, well, you know, I'll just
Speaker 2: keep it on the hat. Maybe I'll just tie it
Speaker 2: to the wrist.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think, Okay, so that's sort of a
Speaker 3: count against this story, I guess, of black Beard putting
Speaker 3: them in the beard. I wonder is it possible that
Speaker 3: along the lines of this, like NASA research we're looking
Speaker 3: at where you could put some kind of gels or jellies,
Speaker 3: you know, flame resistant gels or jellies in the hair.
Speaker 3: There's something that would have been available in the seventeenth
Speaker 3: or eighteenth century. You could like wax your beard with
Speaker 3: a flame resistant material that would like prevent it from
Speaker 3: catching on fire. I'm just spitballing here, I guess.
Speaker 2: So. I mean two things we have to consider about
Speaker 2: pirates without going into a deep dive on like the
Speaker 2: actual realities of pirates is that in some cases these
Speaker 2: were learned men or women. You know, that that might
Speaker 2: be pritvy to information like that that would be useful.
Speaker 2: Also that they could just be clever enough to figure
Speaker 2: out something that would work if they were that attached
Speaker 2: to this dramatic flare they had in mind. But on
Speaker 2: the other hand, I feel like, you know, pirates are
Speaker 2: making bad life choices, so that can include, you know,
Speaker 2: risking your head going up in flames.
Speaker 3: More thoughts about the beard, Okay, I can imagine the
Speaker 3: plausibility of it would be affected by I think how
Speaker 3: long the slow match you're putting in the beard is, Like,
Speaker 3: if it's significantly long and hanging out, that sort of
Speaker 3: gets it away from your face. But the longer the
Speaker 3: match you put in, the heavier it would be, in
Speaker 3: which case I would think, how do you get it
Speaker 3: to stay in the beard? Do you literally have to
Speaker 3: like tie it inside a braid in your beard or
Speaker 3: something thing? So you know what I'm saying, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: just sticking it in there. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 3: beard hair can be kind of thick and tangly, so
Speaker 3: you can imagine sticking something in a beard that's not
Speaker 3: very heavy and it stays there. But I don't know,
Speaker 3: A significant length of something like rope or a slow
Speaker 3: match seems like that would start getting heavy enough to
Speaker 3: just fall out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Going back to some of these illustrations, these classic
Speaker 2: illustrations of black Beard, I guess the idea is that
Speaker 2: he would take a length of slow match, like place
Speaker 2: it over his head and then put the hat on
Speaker 2: top of it, and then you have either end of
Speaker 2: the slow match sticking out on each side. Still I
Speaker 2: think too close for comfort to the rest of his
Speaker 2: hair and his beard. But the way it's physician, maybe
Speaker 2: it has the burning tips of the matches, you know,
Speaker 2: sticking out to either side.
Speaker 3: Ah, yeah, Okay, I guess that's more plausible because I
Speaker 3: was imagining it literally being just in the beard, tangled
Speaker 3: in the beard man.
Speaker 2: I think it sometimes gets conflated to that, either storytelling
Speaker 2: and embellishment or just by looking at a picture like this,
Speaker 2: where like the famous illustration in question, it's like his
Speaker 2: beard is already in kind of like squidlike arms, like
Speaker 2: like dreads, and then the slow match also looks like
Speaker 2: a dread coming out on either side of his head
Speaker 2: that is then producing smoke.
Speaker 3: Okay, but I see I was mentally personally supplying some
Speaker 3: of the more implausible elements myself there that it was
Speaker 3: like necessarily said to be in the beard. That's maybe
Speaker 3: a less common variation on the idea, but.
Speaker 2: I think it's out there. Like I said, there's so
Speaker 2: much you know, myth making and an exaggeration in pirate
Speaker 2: mythology that I think it just inevitably goes there. All right. Well,
Speaker 2: on that note, I think we're going to go ahead
Speaker 2: and call this part one, but we will be back
Speaker 2: for a second episode. I think this is just going
Speaker 2: to be a two parter, but in the next episode
Speaker 2: we'll get a little bit into the idea of the
Speaker 2: quest for Flaming hair and flaming beards, and mythology and folklore.
Speaker 2: We'll also get into some examples from antiquity, so I think,
Speaker 2: and probably some other angles as well that we haven't
Speaker 2: worked out just yet. But yeah, we thought this was
Speaker 2: going to be a one partner, but I think there's
Speaker 2: enough interesting stuff for two here. In the meantime, we'll
Speaker 2: remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
Speaker 2: a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays. Let's see, currently we are doing short form
Speaker 2: episodes on Wednesdays. We're doing Weird House Cinema on Fridays. Now,
Speaker 2: you might notice that our Monday listener Mail episodes have
Speaker 2: ceased for the time being. We're experimenting with a slightly
Speaker 2: different format, going back to the old format of having
Speaker 2: listener Mail episodes occur, say every month or so, and
Speaker 2: instead running a Weird House Cinema rerun in that Monday slot. Again,
Speaker 2: we're just trying things out here, so if you have
Speaker 2: thoughts on this experiment right in, we would love to
Speaker 2: hear from you.
Speaker 3: Right so, want to be super clear, listener Mail is
Speaker 3: not going away. Please keep the messages coming. We are
Speaker 3: still going to read them on the show, just on
Speaker 3: a less frequent basis. The plan is roughly every month,
Speaker 3: month and a half, more like we used to do
Speaker 3: before the weekly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, if you have experiences with burning hair, some
Speaker 2: pirate thoughts to share, or certainly if you have thoughts
Speaker 2: about standard issue Flamer units on space missions and deep
Speaker 2: sea missions in science fiction, write in. We'd love to
Speaker 2: hear from you.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.