Ethic and sex differences in human thermal comfort sensation in Japanese and Caucasian. Relevance of thermal comfort limit of the whole body to heat production-

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This study has been made to discuss ethic and sex differences in thermal comfort sensation through a series of subjective experiments. Healthy young Japanese female and male students, and Caucasian male students participated voluntary in the experiment, in which the subjects exercised on a treadmill with a speed of 4. 5 km/h. The thermal comfort limits of the whole body were 0. 21±0. 03(-) in the Japanese females, 0. 39±0. 05(-) in the Japanese males, and 0. 34±0. 03(-) in the Caucasian males. The thermal comfort limit in the Japanese males was found to be statistically equal to that in the Caucasian males. On the other hand, the thermal comfort limit was significantly larger in the Japanese males than in the Japanese females. Those obtained results indicated that the thermal comfort limit did not differ depending upon the ethic, while it differed depending upon the sex. In addition, the obtained data revealed that the Gagge's prediction equation overestimated the thermal comfort limit in the female subjects, although it estimated validly the one in the male subjects. Therefore, the present study derived an equation to predict the thermal comfort limit for females using the heat production.