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Yes

37 (61.7%)

No

6 (10%)

No, but a person's skin will absorb too much water and eventually turn into mush, thus exposing his organs and causing him to bleed to death due to lack of coverage

17 (28.3%)

Total Members Voted: 59

[noodle0117]

So let's say a fully grown adult was placed in one of those water filled sci-fi life support tubes and he was given food and air but no water.

Would the person eventually dehydrate or will he be able to absorb enough water through his skin to keep him hydrated?

[noodle0117]

-sorry mispost-

[Sensei]

Gee, I'd like to see which heated tabletop game debate this question came out of. I'm guessing, but I'd say yes, I don't think water you absorb through your skin can find its way to somewhere actually useful. You'd need another, more direct source of water. Oh, and while you're talking about the minutiae of people in water-filled tubes, make sure the waste is disposed of properly, mkay? Can't have them absorbing their own feces now, can we.

[MarcAFK]

I think it would depend on how the life support setup actually worked.
If someone was suspended in water and had an air hose and food being delivered through a tube or intraveinously you would want to deliver water along with the food, as i'm pretty sure your skin doesn't really absorb significant quantities of water.
However in most recent science fiction they've had people suspended in a liquid hydrocarbon that holds enough oxygen to allow breathing, i'm pretty sure you couldn't include water in this liquid as it would cause drowning since the lungs aren'rt designed to handle water even if it could hold enough oxygen.
Then you have a third option where you basically return someone to an invitro situation, somehow disable automatic breathing to prevent suffication, provide food and oxygen through the bloodstream, then suspend the subject in water which he will gladly consume for hydration AND deficate into, just like back when you were a baby.
There may be a few flaws in the above statements but i'm fairly sure it's accurate enough.

[Urist Imiknorris]

It's not water, it's phlebotinum.

[Sensei]

...suspend the subject in water which he will gladly consume for hydration AND deficate into, just like back when you were a baby.
There may be a few flaws in the above statements but i'm fairly sure it's accurate enough.

I'm pretty sure that any waste (there wouldn't be much) from intravenous nutrition would go back out in the bloodstream- the material in normal waste is just matter that wasn't absorbed into the bloodstream in the first place. Similarly, water and oxygen would be delivered intravenously. The lungs and digestive system are just left unused. I'm not sure if lungs can handle any oxygenated liquid, but they don't under normal circumstances.

[Flare]

I don't think so. Skin is water resistant but not entirely water proof. As evidence of how much sweat you can pass out when excising, the amount of water that can pass through the skin can be quite large. Water tends to work its way into the skin and from there into the capillaries. Unlike oxygen in which the body needs constant intake and outtake of carbon dioxide, water usage is much slower. I think the human body can absorb enough of the water in order to survive.

Edit: My bad, the skin is a one way membrane it seems.

[DJ]

I'm pretty sure that any waste (there wouldn't be much) from intravenous nutrition would go back out in the bloodstream- the material in normal waste is just matter that wasn't absorbed into the bloodstream in the first place.

Nope, kidneys extract waste from bloodstream into the bladder.

[chaoticag]

If it isn't going in your mouth, you aren't getting hydrated. Your skin may get hydrated, but that's not the same as nutritional water. To put it simply, if we can absorb water through our skin to keep us hydrated, then like frogs, we'd die near instantaneously like frogs on contact with salt water, due to how our cells work (in order for salt to get in, water must get out, shrinking our cells).

[Loud Whispers]

Ya can't breathe and drink at the same time. It's die of thirst or suffocation.

[AntiAntiMatter]

Option #3 on the poll is... interesting, to say the least. Where did that come from?

That said, yes, you would dehydrate if suspended in water but not given any, as I am fairly certain that skin does not absorb water, especially not in the amounts required to live.

[chaoticag]

Eh, it could be worse. The water might be the same for the entire duration of your suspension in the tube thing. Even if the appropriate bathroom arrangements are made, there still the matter of sweating, and I'd imagine that the water would be pretty unsanitary, enough to maybe infect you.

[Starver]

Rather than mess with the whole face-mask supply of oxygen (and food, and, except in this hypothetical example, liquids) I'd imagine that a useful method of providing life-support would be to tap into a significant blood-vessel (or several points) and by using a kind of extended form of dialysis[1] imbue that which needs to be imbued into the blood-stream, extract that which needs to be extracted from the blood-stream and generally perform real-time checks and corrections on these, and the rest of the blood chemistry (including boosting/suppressing trace chemical signals, and what anaesthetic might be needed) to make this so...  In extremis (although you'd need to make it an even more major part of the vascular system than would have been needed for the above) you can even provide assistance to the heart, or by-pass its function altogether.

The advantages are that you don't have to maintain face-mask integrity, risk drying out the bronchial tubes or various other issues.  The disadvantages are that you'd need to make a surgical entry (or several) for the various in/out pipes, and you'd to mask the person anyway  Or plug their mouth, nose, etc[2], and stop their associated autonomic processes (physically, electrically or chemically) for the duration.


As to the original question: Probably, but the yesses and the noses I would have mentioned have already been said, more or less.


[1] [McCoy]What is this?  The Dark Ages?!?[/McCoy]

[2] Perhaps especially 'etc'.

[Levi]

I have never heard a story of a pirate stranded on a desert island or run out of water on his pirate ship surviving by dangling his legs in the water. 

So I voted Yes.

[Heron TSG]

...As evidence of how much sweat you can pass out when excising, the amount of water that can pass through the skin can be quite large

...

Edit: My bad, the skin is a one way membrane it seems.

Well, that and the fact that fluids and chemicals (salt, small amounts of uric acid, etc) are specifically stored in the sweat glands to be excreted. Not only is the skin one way, but this storage is also one-way. The same reason your kidneys are able to take chemicals out of your blood via osmosis even though they're emptier than the blood. Careful control via loops and tiny muscle contractions.

That third option isn't gonna happen. Skin expands in water, but due to its structure (helical keratin fibers connected by longitudinal bars) it will never expand past a certain point. As the skin absorbs more water, the helices just straighten out - but not longer than the fibers' real lengths. The fibers never lose contact with one another, they just get larger - and the skin is too thick to allow water in, even at full expansion. (Which you can reach after about 15-20 minutes in water.) Not sure if an incredibly lengthy exposure would cause permanent damage or not, but it sure as hell wouldn't dissolve completely.