HAPPY T-DAY and more education

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS REPRINTED FROM THE ONLINE OUTDOOR PUBLICATION SNEWS

Chemical-free Thermoregulating and 'Smart'- Coolcore Partners with Pale

Coolcore (www.coolcore.com), the leader in chemical-free thermoregulating fabric, this week announced a partnership with Pale Morning Media for national public relations support.

THERMOREGULATION: Maintenance of a constant internal body temperature independent of the environmental temperature.—How is it possible for a fabric chemically free or not that can regulate your internal temperature? The human body likes its internal temperature to always stay at 98.6 degrees and when one is active it goes up and that triggers sweat to remove the excess heat or if one gets cold that triggers shivering to increase heat in the core of your body. I believe the use of the word thermoregulating is used out of contest.

Coolcore’s “smart” fabric is an engineered material that rapidly accelerates the evaporative drying process without chemical additives or treatments.

Fabric is an inanimate object therefore it is neither smart nor stupid, it just is fabric. It is not possible to engineer a polyester fabric which will do as they claim, accelerate an action. It just happens the action will take p[lace at whatever rate determined by the ambient air temperature and humidity at the time. The rate can change from day to day or within hours.

Independently regulating the core temperature of the wearer at a cool and comfortable level, Coolcore’s base material delivers research-proven performance benefits for both winter and summer activities.

The research was done in a laboratory, I believe the HOHO institute in Germany and how this fabric accomplishes these benefits is never explained.

Along with being the preferred choice for active thermoregulation by leading brands, Coolcore offers a four-season collection of apparel for men and women including baselayers, tees, shorts, leggings and hoodies – as well as a variety of recovery and cooling accessories.

I believe this company is making their own line of garments because they haven’t sold enough other companies on the use of their fabric for their own product lines.

“Our unique and comfortable activewear collection is built on our fabric foundation that’s also truly unique in the marketplace – active thermoregulation without chemical treatment,” said David Ludd, Coolcore’s Vice President of Global Marketing. “The active apparel market is littered with products that use treatments and additives to transform them into performance pieces. We don’t.”

Yes the active apparel market is littered with products that use various treatments that do not work any different than coolcores, which is to say none work.

From day to day I read about some new material that has a miraculous ability to keep the wearer of the garment made of this material cooler, warmer, dryer etc. The promoters of these materials rely on the information they receive from organizations such as the HOHO institute or Kansas State University environmental laboratories or some other testing labs either in Europe or the U.S. They the promotors pay these laboratories to test their materials and are told what to look for. They then tell the customers what they want to hear.

They never show field results that go back say 5 years, hell the material is touted to be whatever right out of the box. Five years from now these fabrics will have been long gone replaced with the newest and greatest in the following year.

With respect to the coolcore products, it is no wonder they keep one cool or will the garment made from their fabric? When it is warm and we sweat the moisture comes out of the pores and condenses on the skin for one purpose to cool us down. If we are wearing a cotton shirt the moisture is absorbed by the cotton so the longer the moisture is against our skin the more heat it will absorb and if the fabric is polyester it will keep the moisture also against our skin surface initially cooling us. However, cotton will also absorb the heat coming from our skin and since the cotton never heats up to skin temperature it just keeps absorbing therefore keeping us cooler.

If the fabric happens to be a synthetic such as polyester is it will absorb your body heat until it is equal to whatever your skin surface temperature is and then stop absorbing the heat you are giving off. Once this occurs the garment is now trapping your heat against your skin surface. In order to cool you must remove your shirt. So I do not believe it will cool you near as efficiently as cotton.

Another reason to wear cotton is because the moisture coming out of your body will be absorbed and this is known as “wicking action” and once the moisture is on the outside surface of your shirt it will be absorbed by the atmosphere. It will dry faster because your body heat will drive the moisture away and travel with it.

Synthetic fiber DOES NOT WICK regardless how many times you read that phrase in an ad or on a hangtag of a garment specifically a base layer garment made from a polyester fiber knitted fabric.

As time goes by I expect we will see more of what I consider non-functioning materials introduced into the outdoor apparel market place. These companies are run by marketing people and as such they will never take the time to really try to test in the field whatever material they are shown for whatever it is supposed to do. That is what the industry has come too. Bogus, bogus, bogus!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!