Can a sneeze exceed the speed of 100 mph?

When the lining of your nose gets irritated from the common cold, pollen, smoke, mucous, or pepper, for example, your body goes into reaction mode: Your chest muscles compress your lungs. The compression sends a blast of air upwards.

Sneezing starts at the back of the throat and produces droplets, as many as 40,000 and can shoot out at speeds greater than 200 miles per hour. The vast majority of the droplets are less than 100 microns across the width of a human hair. Many of them are so tiny that they cannot be seen with the naked eye.

Sneezing cannot occur during sleep due to REMatonia - a bodily state wherein motor neurons are not stimulated and reflex signals are not relayed to the brain. Sufficient external stimulants, however, may cause a person to wake from their sleep for the purpose of sneezing, although any sneezing occurring afterwards would take place with a partially awake status at minimum.

More Info: www.everydayhealth.com

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43 Comments

Denise75013

100 or 10 mph, either way, a timely reminder to keep a wide social distance.

Steve Andriot

My sneezes have scared people and my dogs too. Maximum velocity and decibels. 😁

Neville Thomas

A good explanation of why one sneezes. How many times can a human sneeze in one set? And if it's too many, is it detrimental to one's health.

Patricia Hawes

This has been disputed...only 10, not 100. Please give me my points!!!

Chrissie

Can't sneeze whilst I'm asleep. Never knew that. But waking up for the purpose of sneezing - what a waste of a good snooze!

Cheryl McMeekin

The answer may be wrong but some forceful sneezes can still hurt.

Carmine-James Pitaniello

At my age, if I let out a sneeze anywhere close to that speed, I'd be doing laundry, cleaning walls, and mopping floors for a week.....Seniors do multitasking on sterioids when they sneeze....VISUAL NOT INCLUDED...

gwendolynnbloom

Frank Kwiatkowski, are you related to a Michael and a Martin?

MichaelSaks

Scientists have documented the maximum sneeze velocity at 10 mph.

Frank Kwiatkowski

A long-standing estimate pins the velocity of a sneeze at roughly 100 meters per second, or 224 miles per hour, but that appears to be a gross exaggeration. The figure originates from a mid-century researcher named William Firth Wells, who analyzed the size of airborne droplets from a sneeze and then inferred the speed at which air must travel across a liquid surface to form them. Wells' figure has been repeated for many years but never directly tested in the lab. "I think people have been waiting for someone to come along and debunk it," says Julian Tang, a medical virologist at the Alberta Provincial Laboratory for Public Health in Edmonton. For a study published this year, Tang and his colleagues used high-speed cameras to take pictures of pepper-induced sneezes from six volunteers. The team captured each sneeze by positioning the volunteers in front of a concave mirror and then shining an LED beam toward it. The warm air from the sneeze has a different refractive index than the cooler ambient air, so the reflected LED bends differently. The camera records the changes, and scientists can map the sneeze. The study found that a sneeze's maximum velocity is nowhere near 100 meters per second but instead reaches a high of 4.5 meters per second, or 10 miles per hour. That's comparable to the velocity of air expelled by coughing—and a violent cough can push up a larger volume of air, which requires even more force. "The sneeze is really coming from your upper respiratory tract," Tang explains.

Frank Kwiatkowski

The study found that a sneeze's maximum velocity is nowhere near 100 meters per second but instead reaches a high of 4.5 meters per second, or 10 miles per hour