Can you get frostbite or any other serious cold injuries above 0C?

[dunno what to put here]

Originally Posted by tigre79

You can get trench foot if your feet are wet or sweaty, and that can potentially lead to amputation. You can also get chilblains - damage to the capillary beds in your extremities - due to cold, usually damp conditions.

I had chilblains when I was younger due to walking around a cold kitchen floor with no socks on, and occasionally going outside. No amputations though!

[LondonAreaWeatherSummary]

Ha! try jumping in the North Sea at +5c and see how long before your body starts shutting down. +10c to 65c is the bodys operating range, and either ends of that range only for short periods of time.

[nei]

Water chills your body much faster than air, water less than 20°C is really too cold to survive long term. Bathing in 65°C water would be deadly for more than a few minutes.

[Patricius Maximus]

Originally Posted by LondonAreaWeatherSummary

Ha! try jumping in the North Sea at +5c and see how long before your body starts shutting down. +10c to 65c is the bodys operating range, and either ends of that range only for short periods of time.

That's for water, which has differing heat transfer characteristics from air, which is what the original post was referring to - air. A given person will prefer and be comfortable in hotter water temperatures versus their preferred air temperatures because water siphons heat from the body faster than air does. 5C water has the same effect on the human body as an air temperature much colder than 5C.

That said, although one certainly will get hypothermia in 5C water unless one is very highly acclimated, frostbite is still impossible unless the water temperature is below 0C. In most cases there won't be any water to swim in - it will have turned to ice.

And about the operating range for the human body even for short periods of time I would say 65C water is much more uncomfortable than 10C water, as most people would be scalded or burned by that sort of water temperature, and good luck swimming in that water; I would imagine one would be at great risk of heat stroke (I know I get too hot to swim in 45C water, let alone 65), and one may also be choked by the extreme amount of humidity that would be above the water surface. On the other hand, one who is unacclimatized would likely get hypothermia and shiver in 10C water, but that hardly compares to being scalded and burnt - one would need water quite a bit colder than 10C to do something similar on the cold end of the scale.

So I'd say for most unacclimatized people the range is from 20C to 50C. With acclimatization I'd imagine the range could be extended 10-15 degrees in either direction, more easily in the colder direction.