Question: what is the highest temperature the human body will be able to withstand before organs and skin start to burn and have heavy damage

Alan Richardson answered on 17 Jun 2013:

Hi

Good question but difficult to give you a straight answer.

The skin can only tolerate relatively low temperatures directly (its is easy to scold yourself on hot water). It would be easy to burn yourself. However, to do ‘heavy damage’ you would need to raise your core temperature. In the laboratory we are ethically allowed to raise participants core temperatures to 39.5 degrees celsius. While people could tolerate a couple of degrees higher than that without doing long term damage. I know of a high level triathlete who got their core temperature to 42.6 degrees during a race and became seriously ill. So core temperatures of more than 4oC are going to make you feel bad in the short term, getting a core temperature of over 42-43C could then start to cause you some real long term damage. To get your core this high though would require being exposed to some severe heat or being severely dehydrated and exhausted.

Hope this helps

Alan