Air Conditioning for Football Players

Reported October

Gainesville, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Football season is here! Those bulky uniforms are designed to protect athletes, but they also make football players vulnerable to dangerous overheating. Football deaths from heat stroke are on the rise. Since 2001, 18 young men have died on the field, and researchers have taken notice. They've combined science and a simple set of shoulder pads to protect players from the heat.

Running, jumping, throwing -- you might wonder how they move so quickly in all that padding, but a dangerous problem lies right under the surface.

"Underneath the football uniform, you have 100 percent relative humidity," Nikolaus Gravenstein, M.D., an anesthesiologist at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville, told Ivanhoe.

To stay cool, athletes need to sweat, but bulky uniforms trap the sweat, preventing it from evaporating.

"The evaporation of sweat is a critical factor in aiding, monitoring or controlling body temperature rise in anybody that's exercising," MaryBeth Horodyski, E.D.D., director of research at the University of Florida's department of orthopaedics, told Ivanhoe.

"Primarily, the pads and the jersey end up being equivalent to a person wearing a three-piece wool suit," Dr. Gravenstein explained.

To cool things down, researchers at the University of Florida found inspiration in the OR.

"If we can keep people warmer in the operating room by blowing warm air over them,“ Dr. Gravenstein said, “maybe we can keep people cooler in football gear by blowing cool air over them."

Using a unit cooled with ice, researchers send air into football pads through small channels and tubes.

"And we run the air through there so that the air under the pads is exchanged roughly 500 times a minute, so it's a small hurricane," Dr. Gravenstein explains.h

The result is evaporation of sweat from the upper body. Players are "hooked up" to the system during their breaks off the field.

"The initial words out of their mouth are 'Wow, this is cool'," Horodyski said.

Cool, and a step toward a safer future on the playing field. Dr. Gravenstein says on a hot day, it's very easy for a football player to lose five to 10 pounds of body weight through sweating. Researchers have tested a similar cooling technology for pit crews, fireman and swat officers. The technology costs $20,000 per unit plus $50 per shoulder pad.

The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

MaryBeth Horodyski, EdD, ATC, LAT
Associate Professor / Director of Research
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611-2727
(352) 273-7074
horodmb@ortho.ufl.edu

Lois Smith
Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
Santa Monica, CA 90406
(310) 394-1811
http://www.hfes.org
lois@hfes.org

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