It is important that the practicing fire protection engineer has tools that are computationally easy to use to simulate thermal injury to the skin. This paper presents a brief review of skin damage and the tools that exist for predicting pain and superficial 2nd degree burns due to radiant exposure. New simplified equations for calculating the time to pain and superficial 2nd degree burns for a reference state of the skin are presented. The variation in skin properties: pain receptor depth, initial skin temperature, and epidermal thickness, as a function of age, sex, occupation, and personal habits are examined. The range of variation in these properties for a diverse population are used to develop correction factors for the simplified equations.
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