Bubble Wrap Can Protect Your Beloved Items And Save Your Life At The Same Time
Bubble wrap is an essential item for moving and shipping breakable items safely. The air bubbles found inside bubble wrap work to protect your most valuable items by creating a cushion between objects and things around them (via Macmillan Dictionary). While you may have never thought twice about the importance of bubble wrap, you should. As it turns out, bubble wrap may be able to save your life.
In 2009, a group of medical technicians in Norway decided to study the efficacy of bubble wrap for keeping warm in survival situations. In their study, published in the National Library of Health Medicine, the team found that bubble wrap actually makes a pretty good defense against hypothermia. In fact, bubble wrap may even be able to trap the heat inside your body better than multiple cotton blankets, as the air bubbles inside it bounce back body heat towards you, keeping you toasty warm in freezing weather.
Hypothermia is a medical emergency
The reason why a research team decided to test bubble wrap's ability to keep people warm is due to a condition called hypothermia. According to Mayo Clinic, hypothermia occurs when your body loses heat faster than it can create it. This can quickly become a medical emergency as your body temperature gets dangerously low. Hypothermia can eventually cause organ failure and death if not treated.
The best way to treat hypothermia is to keep it from happening in the first place. In order to do that, you have to be able to keep your body temperature from dropping too low. Wearing warm, dry clothes in layers and drinking warm beverages can help to keep you warm (via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). In survival situations, you may have to get creative in order to stay warm. This is where being aware of alternative materials for keeping warm, such as bubble wrap, could be the difference between life or death.
Bubble wrap can keep you warm and protect you from bad weather
They way bubble wrap can protect you from developing hypothermia works in two ways. First, as stated earleir, it traps heat closer to your body. Second, it can protect you from getting wet. Wet clothes can lower your body temperature drastically during cold weather, and should be removed immediately in temperatures below freezing to avoid hypothermia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Because bubble wrap is made of plastic, it is waterproof, assuming it doesn't have any holes or tears. Having a waterproof layer can be vital for protecting you from rain and snow during cold weather.
Even though bubble wrap may be able to keep you warm in an emergency, don't count on it as your only source of warmth if you can avoid it. In the 2009 study, they tested the efficacy of bubble wrap for staying warm on mannequins. The research team behind the study found bubble wrap was 69% effective at heat retention, but were sure to point out that application on humans would still need to be tested to confirm their findings.