Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday, so we have
Speaker 1: a vault episode for you. This is going to be
Speaker 1: Hair on Fire, Part one, which originally published seven eighteen,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. There's a lot to talk about here, chemistry, mythology.
Speaker 1: It's one of those episodes. So let's dive right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: 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 for
Speaker 3: a big family get together. You know, I was out
Speaker 3: in the backyard grilling, and I did something I have
Speaker 3: done many times before, which is burn all the hair
Speaker 3: off part of my arm. Oh no, yeah, turn and look.
Speaker 3: I mean like I wasn't like badly burned myself, like
Speaker 3: on my skin. But you know, at some point I
Speaker 3: look down and realized, like Oh, what are all these
Speaker 3: weird little kind of pale curls?
Speaker 1: Oh? I see, Okay, do you say you've done this before?
Speaker 1: Do you at least alternate arms or is it just
Speaker 1: always the same 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 I never burn my hand or arm here when
Speaker 3: I'm grilling a small amount of food, like a couple
Speaker 3: of portions of whatever. It's always when I'm grilling for
Speaker 3: a big crowd. So I guess it has something to
Speaker 3: do with like trying to like fit a bunch of
Speaker 3: different individual items on the grill and then go down
Speaker 3: the 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 1: Well that that would make sense, because I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this as like, Okay, I don't know that I've
Speaker 1: ever done this myself, but I think look back on
Speaker 1: all on the grilling I have done over the years,
Speaker 1: and it is generally just grilling for probably just for
Speaker 1: my immediate family, So it's feeling just for like two
Speaker 1: or three people. It's probably just going to be veggies
Speaker 1: that aren't on there very long. And yeah, for I
Speaker 1: guess a variety of reasons, and luck I have not
Speaker 1: like burnt a lot of arm here on the grill,
Speaker 1: but I have to, so I have to ask like
Speaker 1: the follow up questions like what you mentioned what it
Speaker 1: looked like, but that it was was that the primary
Speaker 1: way that you realize something had happened or was there
Speaker 1: also like a skin level sensation And was there a smell? Uh?
Speaker 3: I mean, there's the feeling of heat obviously, which but
Speaker 3: that's just naturally the air, because like I'm reaching over
Speaker 3: a hot fire, I think there is a smell normal.
Speaker 3: In fact, I would say that the smell is probably
Speaker 3: the most characteristic and instantly recognizable sensory part of the
Speaker 3: burning hair experience, right. I mean, almost anybody I think
Speaker 3: can immediately think of the smell of burning hair. It
Speaker 3: seems to stick in people's minds, even if hair burning
Speaker 3: 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 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'd be kind of wired, I guess,
Speaker 1: 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 1: Okay that yeah, that would make sense. There are a
Speaker 1: 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 involved here, like
Speaker 3: how flammable is human hair and why does it smell
Speaker 3: that way? And so forth. I was looking around for
Speaker 3: good sources 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 there are characteristic
Speaker 3: protein burning smells that we might associate with the burning
Speaker 3: of other types of skin and even fingernails and things
Speaker 3: like that. But a big thing is the presence of sulfur.
Speaker 3: According to a paper that I'm going to mention in
Speaker 3: a little bit, human hair is approximately five percent sulfur,
Speaker 3: and that sulfur content is largely responsible for the characteristic smell.
Speaker 3: And this is interesting to me because it explains a similarity,
Speaker 3: at least as far as I can remember. That burning hair,
Speaker 3: to me, smells a little bit like lighting a match.
Speaker 3: Lighting a match produces the distinctive smell of sulfur dioxide
Speaker 3: or generally sulfur compounds, which happened because there is usually
Speaker 3: sulfur content in a match head. It's part of what
Speaker 3: burns to set the match alight. As a side note,
Speaker 3: apparently it is kind of known that you can temporarily
Speaker 3: mask other unpleasant smells. A commonly referenced one is the
Speaker 3: smell of feces by striking a match. Have you ever
Speaker 3: heard this before?
Speaker 1: Rob, Oh, yeah, yeah, of course, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: sometimes you even see that in at least residential bathrooms.
Speaker 1: You know, there will be like some matches out by
Speaker 1: the bathroom facilities, 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 the 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 1: I guess often but not always, I guess. And then
Speaker 1: there is also like the kind of just a saying
Speaker 1: right like, oh, there's a bad smell that may be
Speaker 1: associated with digestion. Someone will be like, oh, somebody light
Speaker 1: 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 afart kind
Speaker 3: of comment.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't Well, I'm not sure that that was
Speaker 1: the level of excitement, Like it's a bad smell in here,
Speaker 1: let's see if it can busts. It's more like there's
Speaker 1: an unpleasant odor. Let us light a match so that
Speaker 1: the smell of that struck match might mask the stink
Speaker 1: 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 your nose and your
Speaker 3: brain are primed to just let the smell of the
Speaker 3: struck match. I think this will be primarily the smell
Speaker 3: of sulfur dioxide. It just take over your smell sensing abilities.
Speaker 3: But it makes me wonder if the burning of hair
Speaker 3: also releases these sulfur compounds that are responsible for the
Speaker 3: characteristic smell, if you could likewise cover up the you know,
Speaker 3: these unpleasant body body aromas, fecal smells and stuff by
Speaker 3: burning hair.
Speaker 1: Well we're not advising that, no, no, but but just
Speaker 1: from 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 about the science of
Speaker 3: burning hair was that some of the best research I
Speaker 3: could find on this came from studies about hair catching
Speaker 3: on fire in spaceships.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, attack ships on fire off the shoulder of.
Speaker 3: Orion, right, yeah. Yeah. So the main paper I was
Speaker 3: looking at is called the Flammability of Human Hair in
Speaker 3: Exploration atmospheres from the year two thousand and nine in
Speaker 3: the SAE Journal International Journal of Aerospace by Sandra L. Olson,
Speaker 3: Devon W. Griffin, David L. Urban, Gary A. Ruff, and
Speaker 3: Elizabeth A. Smith. And so the authors here begin by
Speaker 3: referencing an older study that I'll mention in a second
Speaker 3: that says, the flammability of both skin and hair has
Speaker 3: actually been a subject of major concern since the early
Speaker 3: stages of the US base program. And they refer back
Speaker 3: to an older paper, one from nineteen sixty eight by
Speaker 3: Robert L. Durfey, called the Flammability of Skin and Hair
Speaker 3: in Oxygen Enriched Atmospheres. This was published in in the
Speaker 3: Or as part of a USAF School of Aerospace Medicine
Speaker 3: technical report. This was from December nineteen sixty eight, and
Speaker 3: durfy begins this study from sixty eight by saying, quote,
Speaker 3: observations after recent fires involving human subjects in oxygen atmospheres
Speaker 3: indicate that the humans may have contributed to the spread
Speaker 3: of fires through combustion of their skin and hair. So
Speaker 3: obviously that's quite morbid. But I was wondering what this
Speaker 3: refers to, and I figured that since this was published
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty eight. I think it almost certainly must
Speaker 3: be referring, at least in part to the tragedy of
Speaker 3: the Apollo one fire, which killed three astronauts on January
Speaker 3: twenty seventh, nineteen sixty seven. Those astronauts were Gus Grissom,
Speaker 3: Ed White and Roger B. Chaffey, and they died during
Speaker 3: a launch test that was less than a month before
Speaker 3: the scheduled mission, so they weren't actually in space. It
Speaker 3: was a ground test on Earth before the launch of
Speaker 3: an orbital mission. And the tragedy was that a flash
Speaker 3: fire broke out inside the cabin of the command module.
Speaker 3: The fire probably started with There could have been several
Speaker 3: ignition points, but it may have been an electrical arc
Speaker 3: from faulty wiring, maybe connected to some kind of chemical present,
Speaker 3: like a volume of anti freeze fluid called glycol. But
Speaker 3: however it started, it spread very rapidly due to the
Speaker 3: enriched oxygen atmosphere pressurized inside the cabin. It was basically
Speaker 3: pure oxygen in there, and due to a variety of
Speaker 3: combustible materials spread throughout the cabin interior. Now, remember, as
Speaker 3: we've talked about on the show before, fire needs three
Speaker 3: things to burn, it needs heat, it needs fuel, and
Speaker 3: it needs oxygen. Obviously, in this scenario there could have
Speaker 3: been an initial heat source, some kind of ignition point.
Speaker 3: There would have been lots of oxygen because it was
Speaker 3: a pure oxygen atmosphere inside the command module. And so
Speaker 3: the question is what was the fuel and what was
Speaker 3: the fuel roll of very substances, including parts of human
Speaker 3: bodies inside the command module. And so this study was
Speaker 3: looking into human hair and skin, and so one thing
Speaker 3: it says that is that taken as a whole, even
Speaker 3: with enriched oxygen around, human skin is not especially flammable
Speaker 3: 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 1: Was just shaving off all the hair just not an option?
Speaker 1: Seems like if I got to choose between the two
Speaker 1: for my space mission, I would just say, well, can
Speaker 1: 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 Durfy 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 ill or injured crew member. They
Speaker 3: might have extra oxygen supplied to them. This is common
Speaker 3: in hospitals on Earth as well, or possibly during emergencies
Speaker 3: such as the leak of toxic chemicals or in fighting
Speaker 3: a pre existing fire. Now, the authors point out something
Speaker 3: interesting about the case of breathing pure oxygen through a mask.
Speaker 3: They say, quote, for every breath of pure oxygen breathed in,
Speaker 3: the exhaled breath still contains ninety five percent of the oxygen.
Speaker 3: This creates an environment of increased oxygen near the head
Speaker 3: and chest. Now, I did not know that, and don't
Speaker 3: think I would have thought about that before, but from
Speaker 3: what I looked up in other sources, yes, this seems right.
Speaker 3: In breathing say normal air on Earth, which is roughly
Speaker 3: twenty one percent oxygen and the rest is mostly nitrogen.
Speaker 3: In rough terms, that air on Earth. You know, if
Speaker 3: you say twenty percent is oxygen, about fifteen percent of
Speaker 3: the air you breathe out is oc oxygen. So what
Speaker 3: 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 through 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: like different space exploration and environments have varied. The International
Speaker 3: Space Station actually maintains roughly the Earth's atmosphere mixture of
Speaker 3: gases in the air, so about twenty one percent oxygen.
Speaker 3: The rest is nitrogen, but the nitrogen has to be
Speaker 3: supplied through through like bringing up tanks of nitrogen to
Speaker 3: make up that difference. So that and other considerations have
Speaker 3: led people to plan that in some other cases there
Speaker 3: might be higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere breathed
Speaker 3: within space exploration contexts in the future. The authors cite
Speaker 3: a few other examples. They cite past examples as well.
Speaker 3: They say the Apollo missions and sky Lab used higher
Speaker 3: oxygen levels, and as of the time of this paper,
Speaker 3: there were plans for other missions that the authors say
Speaker 3: would have used higher oxygen concentrations. They cite the Orion
Speaker 3: Crew exploration vehicle. They cite the Altai Lander, which would
Speaker 3: have been at the time this mission was planned, would
Speaker 3: have been a landing vehicle for a US mission returning
Speaker 3: to the Moon. And they also talk about higher oxygen
Speaker 3: concentrations in possible lunar surface habitats. So there would be
Speaker 3: numerous scenarios where you're in a space exploration context and
Speaker 3: you would have increased oxygen levels. Either there's just ambiently
Speaker 3: increased oxygen in the particular mission or vehicle you're talking about,
Speaker 3: or you might be needing to give somebody oxygen for
Speaker 3: some reason, in which case there would be in much
Speaker 3: increased oxygen around their head and chest. The authors also
Speaker 3: point out that certain medical interventions could provide ignition points,
Speaker 3: such as you could potentially start a fire during defibrillation,
Speaker 3: and this could happen even on Earth, And I was like, really, yes,
Speaker 3: I went and read about this. It seems to put
Speaker 3: some fears at rest. It is very rare. This is
Speaker 3: not something that commonly happens, but there have been reported cases.
Speaker 3: For example, the following study. I was looking at a
Speaker 3: study published in the Journal of the American College of
Speaker 3: Cardiology by Sanchez at All from the year twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: It talks about a case where a seventy two year
Speaker 3: old male showed up at the emergency room. He was
Speaker 3: suffering atrial fibrillation, an erratic elevated heart rate, and there
Speaker 3: were several interventions, including the use of a defibrillator to
Speaker 3: stabilize the regular heartbeat. So they put the leads on
Speaker 3: your chest and they send a charge to try to
Speaker 3: synchronize the muscles of the heart. The report says, quote,
Speaker 3: the defibrillator pads ignited in flames after the defibrillation button
Speaker 3: was pressed. The betting and oxygen mask also caught fire.
Speaker 3: Now that's something you don't usually think of happening. However,
Speaker 3: the authors stressed that this is extremely rare. They say
Speaker 3: there are only two known cases in the medical literature
Speaker 3: that they could identify. And also fortunately the patient did
Speaker 3: not suffer actually suffer burn injuries. What was burned appeared
Speaker 3: to be the pads and the patient's body hair in
Speaker 3: some parts of the betting. But they say to avoid
Speaker 3: this happening. There are several steps you can do. Of course,
Speaker 3: the increased oxygen from supplemental oxygen probably contributed here. So
Speaker 3: they say you can remove or place oxygen masks or
Speaker 3: nasal canul of further away from the patient's chest when
Speaker 3: you're doing a defibrillation charge. They say that you can
Speaker 3: prepare the pads better, make sure that they have complete
Speaker 3: attachment to the chest wall. They say chest hair should
Speaker 3: be trimmed ideally, that that helps, and they also say
Speaker 3: avoid alcohol products during the preparation for the defib anyway,
Speaker 3: so that was sort of a tangent. But defibrillation is
Speaker 3: one of the scenarios the author is mentioned that could
Speaker 3: possibly provide an ignition point in space. But coming back
Speaker 3: to the burning hair in space study, the authors also
Speaker 3: mentioned cauterization as a medical procedure that could provide increased
Speaker 3: risk of fire in an oxygen enriched environment. So you
Speaker 3: pair the oxygen ch atmosphere in some spacecraft and space
Speaker 3: exploration environments with various ignitionen scenarios and you've got the
Speaker 3: 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 medical
Speaker 3: ignition scenarios mentioned above, like defibrillation and cauterization, the author
Speaker 3: is 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 the best way to limit the risk
Speaker 3: of fire is to control access of those ignition sources
Speaker 3: to fuel by removing combustible materials or making them less combustible.
Speaker 1: You know, I've been watching enough alien movies recently to
Speaker 1: of course know that standard issue. If you're going on
Speaker 1: a space mission, you have a flamethrower on board, you
Speaker 1: have or at least a flame or unit. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's it's necessary. It's not nothing that's supposed to
Speaker 1: be like spitting jelly gasoline or anything like that, Like
Speaker 1: not a military flamethrower, but still a unit that shoots
Speaker 1: a big plume of fire at things.
Speaker 3: Do they have that, that's a good question. Is there
Speaker 3: an industrial use or do they make them? Maybe they
Speaker 3: make them now that.
Speaker 1: I I think sometimes that's the case, But I don't
Speaker 1: know the best I could do putting this together, watching
Speaker 1: the films in the back of my mind, always thinking
Speaker 1: like flame is probably not a great idea in an enclosed,
Speaker 1: sealed environment without even factoring in and all the stuff
Speaker 1: we've been talking about here. But I'm guessing you could
Speaker 1: make a case for Okay, if you are dealing with
Speaker 1: some sort of a life form situa biological threat, like
Speaker 1: some sort of a bug, not a full blown xenomorph,
Speaker 1: you know, but just kind of whatever is expected to occur,
Speaker 1: then I guess you can make a case for a
Speaker 1: flame unit. And then on top of that, if you're
Speaker 1: looking at some sort of a potential like boarding scenario,
Speaker 1: like a boarding action, like people coming on your ship.
Speaker 1: They aren't supposed to be there and you want to
Speaker 1: encourage them to leave or to back off. I guess
Speaker 1: a flame unit you could make some sort of a
Speaker 1: case that a flame unit is better than a gun
Speaker 1: could potentially puncture the whole. But I don't know. Okay,
Speaker 1: once you factor all this in, though, is the risk
Speaker 1: 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 use they're more like the ISS,
Speaker 3: like they supply the nitrogen, they have a more earth
Speaker 3: like atmosphere rather than the oxygen enriched atmospheres that would
Speaker 3: increase the risk of using flames.
Speaker 1: Sure, Plus everything's a little bit wet on the Nostromo,
Speaker 1: so maybe that helps now.
Speaker 3: The authors of this paper note that a lot of
Speaker 3: individual mission durations are short enough that astronauts don't need
Speaker 3: to cut their hair in space, but even that does
Speaker 3: happen sometimes. The space haircuts are real. They include a
Speaker 3: photo from the ISS of a space haircut where Russian
Speaker 3: cosmonaut Valerie Corzun is doing a haircut for the American
Speaker 3: 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, you think hair gets
Speaker 3: everywhere during a normal Earth haircut with regular gravity, you know,
Speaker 3: I feel like I get a haircut and days later
Speaker 3: I'm still finding hair. It's like I'm not even wearing
Speaker 3: the same clothes. What's going on? But yeah, so in
Speaker 3: microgravity you could imagine it's a real headache.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like you got to make a strong
Speaker 1: case for that haircut and or be really good with
Speaker 1: that vacuum huze.
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 stimulate
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: hairstyles tested different lengths. The spread was sort of quick
Speaker 3: at first over the sort of frizzy outer layer of
Speaker 3: the surface of a hair mass, and then would be followed,
Speaker 3: especially in the cases of longer hair where there's a
Speaker 3: lot of hair, followed by quote continued bulk burning. And
Speaker 3: they found that, oh yeah, it is absolutely right that
Speaker 3: increasing oxygen will increase the flame spread rate of hair significantly.
Speaker 3: They say it's by more than an order of magnitude,
Speaker 3: so it's major. And Rabbi included a couple of pictures
Speaker 3: for you to look at here of what the hair
Speaker 3: looked like after being exposed to fire in normal atmosphere
Speaker 3: versus in a thirty percent oxygen atmosphere, and it's a
Speaker 3: major difference. The thirty percent oxygen one looks way more
Speaker 3: like a matted mass of keratin ash goo. Oh yeah, absolutely, Chris,
Speaker 3: So this is something that I don't think I ever
Speaker 3: would have thought of before, but the authors say, yes,
Speaker 3: their findings show that quote in the elevated oxygen concentration
Speaker 3: environments planned for future exploration missions, hair flammability becomes an
Speaker 3: important consideration for cru safety. With the high flame spread
Speaker 3: rates reported here, an astronaut's entire head would be engulfed
Speaker 3: in flames in seconds, and serious injury could occur before
Speaker 3: the flames are extinguished. It is suggested that acceptable mitigation
Speaker 3: strategies such as hair coverings be adopted and shaving be encouraged.
Speaker 3: And they talk about a number of different interventions you
Speaker 3: could employ soul. Yeah, you could like cut hair. You
Speaker 3: could shave parts of the body. You could shave the head.
Speaker 3: You could cover the hair with flame retardant kind of
Speaker 3: hair coverings and materials. You can put flame resistant gels
Speaker 3: and jellies in the hair. They mentioned several of these
Speaker 3: that in some cases are used and have been used.
Speaker 3: So there are different interventions you could do. But ultimately
Speaker 3: they say, if you have elevated oxygen levels and you
Speaker 3: are trying to prevent fires, you really do need to
Speaker 3: think about human hair.
Speaker 1: Wow, you know, I can't help but think about like
Speaker 1: the sci fi ramifications. And on one level, I love
Speaker 1: the idea of like hairless shaved astronauts. You know that
Speaker 1: you have removed all their hair in order to prevent
Speaker 1: this from happening. But On the other hand, I kind
Speaker 1: of like the idea of a bunch of astronauts that
Speaker 1: are using some sort of especially made palmade Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'll have some sort of like a maybe slicked back
Speaker 1: greaser look going on with this special space space goop.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everybody looks like John Travolta. They in grease. They've
Speaker 3: all got the space pompadoors that the Yeah, the flame
Speaker 3: retardant jelly in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the Misfits right where they have the hair
Speaker 1: all crafted. Now, I got to keep an eye out
Speaker 1: for it. I keep watching all these space movies, and
Speaker 1: I have not been paying enough attention to everyone's hairstyles.
Speaker 1: Which space movie has the has the most slicked back hair?
Speaker 1: Where is the most palmate employed in science fiction? I'm
Speaker 1: 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: with the chemistry of burning hair, and I ended up
Speaker 3: with the threats of hair catching on fire in space.
Speaker 1: You know, we mentioned boarding actions earlier, and one of
Speaker 1: the first places that my mind went when we started
Speaker 1: looking into this was what about Blackbeard the Pirate. So
Speaker 1: black Beard the Pirate was, of course a real person
Speaker 1: that has been mythologized and fictionalized to varying degrees over time,
Speaker 1: but this was an actual pirate, Edward Teach, who reportedly
Speaker 1: lives sixteen eighty through seventeen eighteen. And yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: great deal of legend about this man, including the idea
Speaker 1: that he would affix slow matches. Sometimes these are just
Speaker 1: called fuses, but slow matches were they would have all
Speaker 1: like coils of this stuff. They burned slow, as the
Speaker 1: name implies, they burned very hot, and they're used for
Speaker 1: igniting like the fuses for cannons, explosive materials, grenades, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, but also of course could be used
Speaker 1: 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 they'd have like a powder pan with
Speaker 3: a slow match that ignited it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so it would be common to have these
Speaker 1: on hand. But of course part of the mystique of
Speaker 1: black beard, is that he wouldn't just have burning slow matches,
Speaker 1: say on his belt or whatnot, He would have them
Speaker 1: under his hat. And I think this sometimes gets conflated
Speaker 1: into being like woven into his hair or even in
Speaker 1: his beard anyway that you frame it slow matches in
Speaker 1: very close proximity to what is generally described and or
Speaker 1: depicted as wild hair and beard. You know, Like the
Speaker 1: idea here is that he would do this before array,
Speaker 1: before a boarding action, to make himself look more fearsome
Speaker 1: with those smoking fuses, with like the little pinpoints of
Speaker 1: red ember sticking out on either side of 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 it beginning in
Speaker 3: your face? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's a very just few intensive
Speaker 1: environment anyway, if their cannons going off, muskets firing, and
Speaker 1: then you know, folks are smoking as well. That's something
Speaker 1: worth noting, I guess is I've never been a smoker. Smokers,
Speaker 1: of course, by practice, are going to have frequently have
Speaker 1: burning objects in close proximity to their hair and beard,
Speaker 1: and may have additional thoughts in all of this, like
Speaker 1: I don't know how often, how often, say, just a
Speaker 1: smoker of cigarettes with a prominent beard would encounter some
Speaker 1: sort of a beard burn scenario. But then again again
Speaker 1: we have to remember that a slow match would have
Speaker 1: I believe burnt much hotter than your average cigarette or
Speaker 1: pipe or whatnot. Yeah, anyway, so yeah, I had questions
Speaker 1: about this too, like did he really do this? Was
Speaker 1: this safe? I mean, I'm not particularly worried about Blackbeard's
Speaker 1: personal safety toil, but is this feasible? And so I
Speaker 1: was looking around at some serious texts about Blackbeard and pirates,
Speaker 1: and a number of them, number of them didn't really
Speaker 1: do much deliberation on this point. They just kind of
Speaker 1: mention it. And there's you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: there's a lot more pressing history to discuss here, So
Speaker 1: not a slide at those sources at all. I also
Speaker 1: ran across at least a few more casual commentators who
Speaker 1: dismissed it as a myth because they said, well, this
Speaker 1: would have surely caught his hair on fire, so it
Speaker 1: you know, he almost certainly didn't do it. But I
Speaker 1: did finally find discussion of it in Dinnerson Little's twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen book The Golden Age of Piracy, The Truth behind
Speaker 1: Pirate Myths, and so he attributes, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of this myth making to Captain Charles Johnson's seventeen twenty
Speaker 1: four book A General History of the Robberies and Murders
Speaker 1: of the most most Notorious Pirates that's spelled p y
Speaker 1: R A T E S.
Speaker 3: Gotta love pirate with y Yeah.
Speaker 1: And we have to note that the actual identity of
Speaker 1: this author remains unknown. There is apparently no record of
Speaker 1: such a Captain Johnson, and some have even argued that
Speaker 1: the author here is actually Daniel Defoe. Yeah, of Robinson Crusoe, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So we ultimately don't know for sure. I think historians
Speaker 1: kind of go back and forth with different theories, but
Speaker 1: it seems to be agreed upon that whoever wrote this,
Speaker 1: they had some talent for fiction. They also had a
Speaker 1: great love of facts and details, and the resulting work
Speaker 1: is kind of a mix of the two. So you
Speaker 1: have you do have some factual information that's very helpful
Speaker 1: to the historian, but you also have plenty of just
Speaker 1: blatant fiction mixed in as well.
Speaker 3: Oh well, that kind of source is in a way great.
Speaker 3: I mean, it makes it not as very frustrating as
Speaker 3: a historical source, but also an interesting problem for historians.
Speaker 1: Right right now, on the slow match in or adjacent
Speaker 1: to the hair, in particular, the author little here adds
Speaker 1: the following quote. Still pirates, privateers, merchant seamen and naval
Speaker 1: seamen tasked with throwing grenades in battle sometimes carried the
Speaker 1: burning slow match needed to light the grenade fuses in
Speaker 1: their hats, but it was more usual to tie it
Speaker 1: around a wrist or pin it to their clothing or
Speaker 1: hat with a match case. Although one image of Jean Bart,
Speaker 1: the famous French privateer in the service of France, shows
Speaker 1: him with a length of lighted match held in his teeth.
Speaker 1: Ugh and so he adds that Captain Johnson or whoever
Speaker 1: was behind that pseudonym, would have surely seen the image
Speaker 1: in question. They would have been familiar with this idea.
Speaker 1: This image of Bart, and so he and he also
Speaker 1: points out that the slow match again burns slow but
Speaker 1: very hot by design in order to light fuses that,
Speaker 1: despite what movies and looney tune cartoons portray, can be
Speaker 1: rather hard to light. That's why you need a slow fuse.
Speaker 1: You can't just you know, you couldn't just strike a
Speaker 1: match and so forth. You need something hot and more
Speaker 1: or less consistent. And then this is where he finally
Speaker 1: gets to the part. This is where Little gets to
Speaker 1: the part that I was wondering about. He adds, quote,
Speaker 1: slow matches could thus easily ignite hair, and a pirate's greasy, tarry,
Speaker 1: flaming beard would have been a hellish spectacle and one
Speaker 1: probably never repeat it. So I guess that's as close
Speaker 1: to an answer as I could really find. Basically, like, yes,
Speaker 1: slow matches on the hat, in the hat and so forth,
Speaker 1: that's going to be expected to a degree, But there's
Speaker 1: like a fine line. You wouldn't want to push it
Speaker 1: too far, and if someone did push it too far,
Speaker 1: it would be notable. You know, that pirate would ever,
Speaker 1: would forever be remembered as the guy whose head went
Speaker 1: up in a ball of fire because he was trying
Speaker 1: to be a little bit too dramatic in the boarding action,
Speaker 1: and other pirates would decide, well, you know, I'll just
Speaker 1: keep it on the hat. Maybe I'll just tie it
Speaker 1: 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 beard. I wonder is it possible that along
Speaker 3: the lines of this, like NASA research we're looking at
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 1: I guess. So, I mean, two things we have to
Speaker 1: consider about pirates without going into a deep dive on
Speaker 1: like the actual realities of pirates, is that in some
Speaker 1: cases these were learned men or women, you know, that
Speaker 1: that might be pretty to information like that that would
Speaker 1: be useful. Also, that they could just be clever enough
Speaker 1: to figure out something that would work if they were
Speaker 1: that attached to this dramatic flare they had in mind.
Speaker 1: But On the other hand, I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: pirates are making bad life choices, so that can include,
Speaker 1: you know, risk 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 something,
Speaker 3: so you know what I'm saying, like just sticking it
Speaker 3: in there? I don't know. I mean, beard hair can
Speaker 3: be kind of thick and tangly, so you can imagine
Speaker 3: sticking something in a beard that's not very heavy and
Speaker 3: it stays there. But I don't know, a significant length
Speaker 3: of something like rope or a slow match seems like
Speaker 3: that would start getting heavy enough to just fall out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Going back to some of these illustrations, these classic
Speaker 1: illustrations of black Beard, I guess the idea is that
Speaker 1: he would take a length of slow match like place
Speaker 1: it over his head and then put the hat on
Speaker 1: top of it, and then you have either end of
Speaker 1: the slow match sticking out on each side. Still I
Speaker 1: think too close for comfort to the rest of his
Speaker 1: hair and his beard. But the way it's physician, maybe
Speaker 1: it has the burning tips of the matches sticking out
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: I think it sometimes gets conflated to that, either through
Speaker 1: storytelling and embellishment or just by looking at a picture
Speaker 1: like this, where like the famous illustration in question, it's
Speaker 1: like his beard is already in kind of like squidlike arms,
Speaker 1: like like dreads, and then the slow match also looks
Speaker 1: like a dread coming out on either side of his
Speaker 1: head 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 1: I think it's out there. Like I said, there's so
Speaker 1: much you know, myth making and an exaggeration in pirate
Speaker 1: mythology that I think it just inevitably goes there. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, I think we're going to go ahead
Speaker 1: and call this part one, but we will be back
Speaker 1: for a second episode. I think this is just going
Speaker 1: to be a two parter. But in the next episode
Speaker 1: we'll get a little bit into the idea of the
Speaker 1: quest for flaming hair and flaming beards and mythology and folklore.
Speaker 1: We'll also get into some examples from antiquity, so I think,
Speaker 1: and probably some other angles as well that we haven't
Speaker 1: worked out just yet. But yeah, we thought this was
Speaker 1: going to be a one partner, but I think there's
Speaker 1: enough interesting stuff for two here. In the meantime, we'll
Speaker 1: remind you that Stuff to Will Your Mind is primarily
Speaker 1: a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 1: and Thursdays. Let's see. Currently we are doing short form
Speaker 1: episodes on Wednesdays. We're doing Weird House Cinema on Fridays. Now,
Speaker 1: you might notice that our Monday listener mail episodes have
Speaker 1: ceased for the time being. We're experimenting with a slightly
Speaker 1: different format, going back to the old format of having
Speaker 1: listener mail episodes occur, say, every month or so and
Speaker 1: instead running a weird House cinema rerun in that Monday slot. Again,
Speaker 1: we're just trying things out here, so if you have
Speaker 1: thoughts on this experiment right in, we would love to
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah. So, if you have experiences with burning hair some
Speaker 1: pirate thoughts to share, or certainly if you have thoughts
Speaker 1: about standard issue Flamer units on space missions and deep
Speaker 1: sea missions in science fiction, right in, we'd love to
Speaker 1: 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: to topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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