What Is the Minimum Lethal Dose of Radiation for Humans?

[bioquest]

What are the miminum temperatures that any part of your body would have to be exposed to in order for you to definetly, 100% chance freeze or burn to death?/die as a result of?

 

[DaveC426913]

For how long?
Temperatue of what? Air? Water?
How much of their body?
Who is the subject? What is their mass? Medical history?

People have been exposed to -200C temperatures and lived - if it was just their hand and just for a few seconds.

C'mon - there is absolutely no way to answer this question without a great deal more input.

 

[jim mcnamara]

You need to rephrase your question.

You will die from prolonged unprotected exposure to ~110F at 100% RH because your core temp will rise due to the fact that sweating does not cool the skin, for example. People die in saunas or steam baths like this all the time. They stay too long, overheat and die.

What exactly are you after?

Anybody can come up with:
burn to death: unprotected whole body @5000F for 30 seconds
freeze solid: unprotected whole body @-450F for 30 seconds


You could have your hand in 5000F for 30 seconds and still survive - minus a hand. It would cauterize. Ditto hand in liquid nitrogen for 30 seconds. If you contained bleeding after your hand cracked off.

 

[bioquest]

What level of whole body radiation exposure/poisioning will kill you?

 

[Andy Resnick]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning#Table_of_exposure_levels_and_symptoms

The LD 50/30 dose (50% mortality after 30 days) is 3-4 Sv. The LD 100/7 dose is 10-50 Sv.

For comparison,

1 year in Houston = 0.001 Sv
8-day space shuttle flight = 0.0053 Sv
5 month stay on MIR = 0.16 Sv
Trip to Moon = 0.011 Sv
Trip to Mars (flight) = 0.5 Sv/yr, surface stay = 0.12 Sv/yr