Medicine: Windburn to Sunburn

Skin Specialist Charles Howard White of Cambridge, England, and Physicist William Henry Crew of New York University became good friends last year while the latter spent a sabbatical year at Cambridge University. Result of that friendship was the first demonstration that “windburn” is really sunburn, proof of which they published in Science last week.

Professor Crew attacked the problem with direct simplicity. He made himself a sleeve from a length of automobile tire inner tube, in which he cut a square-inch aperture. Slipping his arm into the sleeve, Professor Crew thrust it into the 40 m.p.h. blast blown through a sunless wind-tunnel ordinarily used for testing model airplanes. During a half-hour exposure to the blast, the square-inch of bare skin “exhibited ”goose-flesh’ but at no subsequent time was there the slightest evidence of reddening or chapping of the exposed area of skin,” reported Professor Crew.

While covered with perspiration people sunburn very slowly because sweat filters out the burning actinic rays of the sun. When Dr. Whittle and Professor Crew recollected this fact, they concluded that a strong wind evaporates sweat, exposes the skin to unfiltered sunlight which causes the sunburn usually believed to be windburn. Wind by itself, they are sure, does not injure human skin.