At 95% humidity, what percentage of the air around us is water vapour? Can you drown?

Question

king · Answer

at any humidity i dont think we can drown bcuz at an high humidity we will sweat a lot and thats all and our sweat is mainly salt water so we cant drown unless we push ourselves down and suicide!

anonymous · Answer

the humidity means the percentage of water mass in the total weight of steam,therefore the mass percentage of air is 5%. we die from Suffocation

jamesj · Answer

There are two types of Humidity: Absolute Humidity and Relative Humidity.

Absolute Humidity is the weight of water vapor in a cubic meter of air.  The higher the temperature, the higher the ability of air to hold water.  For example, at 20 C, the maximum Absolute Humidity is 17.3 g/m^3.  At 50 C, the maximum Absolute Humidity is 83.0 g/m^3

Relativity Humidity is the % of water vapor in the air relative to the maximum possible Absolute Humidity.  For example, if the air temperature is 20 C and the Absolute Humidity is 10.0 g/m^3, then the Relative Humidity is

$$ Relative \ Humidity=\frac{10.0}{17.3}=0.58=58\% $$


When we use the word Humidity is ordinary speech, we're talking about Relative Humidity.

So ... if the humidity is 95% or even 100%, that doesn't mean 95% or 100% of the air around us is water vapor; just the amount of water in the air is 95% or 100% of the maximum it can hold.

Even at 50 C and 100% Relative Humidity, there is only 83.0 grams per cubic meter.  Now 
1 cubic meter = (100)^3 cubic cm
                      = 1,000,000 cubic cm 

If you collected all 83 g of the water together, as 
1 gm of water = 1 cm
then
83.0 grams = 83 cubic cm

Hence in 1 cubic cm, 83 g of water is
83/1,000,000 = 0.0083%

much less than 1%

So even at 100% Humidity at 50 C we wouldn't drown.  We'd be very uncomfortable, from the heat content of the air and water, but we could still breath.